About this episode

The episode reviews the horror film Hokum, discussing its scares and flaws while debating its classification as folk horror.

A remote hotel. A haunted honeymoon suite. A chalk circle that really should have been finished properly. Hokum gives us scares, screams and one very busy dumbwaiter, but does it give us folk horror? In this episode the FolknHell trio check into Hokum , Damien McCarthy’s 2026 horror about a cynical, suicidal writer retreating to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, finish his book, and generally be horrible to almost everyone he meets. Before long, there are rumours of a witch, a locked honeymoon suite, a missing hotel worker, magic mushrooms, a terrifying cellar, and a plot that starts behaving like a locked-room mystery after several pints. The good news: the film is genuinely scary. Andy and Dave both found it tense, jumpy and effective in the cinema, while David admits it made him scream “like a lemon”. The bad news: the more they talk, the more Hokum starts to wobble. Om Bauman is hard to care about, the backstory arrives far too late, the police apparently cannot search a building properly, and the folk horror elements feel less woven in than nailed on. The big debate lands on whether Hokum is folk horror at all. There is an isolated setting, a witch, folklore…

People in this episode

Hosts: Andrew Davidson, Dave Houghton, David Hall

Topics covered

• horror film
• folk horror
• film review
• psychological thriller
• Irish cinema

Keywords

• Hokum
• Damien McCarthy
• folk horror
• horror film review
• Irish inn
• psychological thriller
• scary movies

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Hokum

Places: Ireland

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