Adam Scott’s Criminally Overlooked 2026 Thriller Is Finally on Streaming

You recognize it has been a very good 12 months for horror motion pictures when a real hit nonetheless slips by the cracks. We spent the summer season on discourse over Obsession, The Backrooms, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, and The Finish of Oak Road, all of which pulled in nine-digit takes on the field workplace. Earlier than that, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was a important if not a business success. Normally horror followers must kind by indies for his or her style repair, however this 12 months has been a movable feast.

What’s attention-grabbing concerning the unfold in 2026 is that there is room for each sort of horror within the present wave. Solely a few these motion pictures qualify for the previous “elevated horror” (learn: the actual monster is trauma) designation. The remaining are good old style guts-and-gore flicks.

One 2026 hit that is elevated (sometimes actually) is the Irish ghost story Hokum, which debuted in Might to rave evaluations and stable ticket gross sales. It made cash however wasn’t a blockbuster.

Wanting on the 12 months in horror, Hokum managed to string a really explicit kind of needle; it got here out two weeks earlier than Obsession and Backrooms went head-to-head on the field workplace, so it made its cash and obtained out earlier than the actual competitors began. For those who missed Hokum in the midst of all that, it is now streaming on Hulu, and it deserves a spot in your cinematic rotation within the run-up to Halloween.

Issues to do in Derry while you’re lifeless

Hokum has such a Stephen King-friendly premise that it is a shock to study he wasn’t concerned. As an alternative, Hokum was written and directed by Damian McCarthy, who beforehand made 2024’s Oddity and 2020’s Caveat.

Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott, Severance) is an American novelist who’s struggling to put in writing the conclusion to his well-liked trilogy. Left at a unfastened finish, he chooses to go to the resort in rural Eire the place his late dad and mom spent their honeymoon. Initially, Ohm’s solely aim is to depart his dad and mom’ ashes within the close by woods, however then he by accident stumbles into what is likely to be a homicide thriller, a ghost story, and/or a vivid hallucination.

Hokum may be described as a kind of backwoods Irish Gothic, buying and selling castles and towers for an previous resort with a ugly historical past. It is a cautious, deliberate movie that will get a number of mileage out of ominous silences and portraits of stillness. A number of critics have described Hokum as a haunted home film, however that does not strike me as absolutely correct. One thing is haunted, completely, however there are a number of candidates for what, who, and why.

Picture: Neon/Everett Assortment

It is value figuring out earlier than you begin that Hokum begins at a gradual boil, centered on Scott as one of many nice disagreeable vacationers in cinematic historical past. It is not a film that is in any nice hurry to get the place it is going, and for some time, appears like a procession of creating pictures. The primary half-hour specifically is sometimes mistakable for a product of the tourism business. Go to stunning, rural Eire. You solely would possibly get murdered by resort ghosts.

As soon as Hokum disengages its parking brake, it turns into an evocative thriller, a lot of which Scott has to hold throughout the end line. He spends a number of the movie solo and silent, so the film’s story will get advised by physique language, digicam angles, and point-of-view pictures. It is unusually keen to belief its viewers, however it’d all be for nothing if Scott wasn’t as much as the problem.

Picture: Neon/Everett Assortment

There don’t seem like too many items that particularly reward Scott’s efficiency, however Hokum is on a brief record of horror movies that may completely collapse on the runway with a much less expert actor on middle stage (see additionally Happy Death Day, which piles an analogous quantity on Jessica Rothe’s shoulders), and Scott pulls it off. It’s simple (a minimum of for me) to think about him as a Parks and Recreation man, however between Hokum and Severance, Scott has been actually piling up career-defining performances in the previous couple of years.

In a much less stacked 12 months, Hokum could be on the quick record for one in all 2026’s finest horror movies. Even so, it simply makes the highest 10. Now that it is out there on demand, it is value queuing it up as a part of your Halloween celebrations.

Hokum is now streaming on Hulu.