Article • FolknHell •
FolknHell reviews Hokum 2026, debating jump scares, witches, plot holes, chalk circles and whether it is really 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?
Contents Opening Thoughts The Set-Up Scares, Screams And One Unfinished Chalk Circle Plot Holes In The Honeymoon Suite Is Hokum Folk Horror? Scores Referenced In This Episode Film Links Final Verdict Opening Thoughts Hokum sends Adam Scott to a remote Irish hotel full of locked rooms, witchy rumours, mushrooms, chalk circles and suspiciously under-searched corners.
Andy, Dave and David pick through the scares, the plot holes, the surprisingly comic murder panic, and the big question: is this actually folk horror, or just a horror film wearing a witch’s hat?
It is a film with all the right ingredients for FolknHell. A remote inn. A local legend. A sinister cellar. A locked honeymoon suite. A writer with family trauma. Some occult chalk business. The problem is not a shortage of atmosphere. The problem is that Hokum keeps opening interesting doors, then wandering off down the corridor. Back To Top The Set-Up This week 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 missing hotel worker, magic mushrooms, a terrifying cellar, and a plot that starts behaving like a locked-room mystery after several pints.
The official premise suggests a writer consumed by tales of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite. The hosts are not entirely convinced the film itself supports that cleanly. What it actually becomes is stranger, messier and much harder to summarise: part ghost story, part murder mystery, part folk horror tease, part comic panic spiral.
And somewhere in the middle of it all is Om Bauman, a man whose tragic backstory arrives so late that the film has already spent most of its running time making him as difficult to like as possible. Back To Top Scares, Screams And One Unfinished Chalk Circle The good news is simple: Hokum is 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 jump scares land. The cellar works. The witch imagery has bite. The soundtrack and atmosphere do plenty of heavy lifting.
There is a particular pleasure in the chalk circle sequence, where Om tries to protect himself from whatever is dragging people down into the dark. The fact that the circle is not properly completed gives the scene a nasty little logic of its own. In a film where the rules are often vague, this is one moment where the danger feels clean, immediate and pleasingly horrible.
The trouble is repetition. The film relies heavily on the same kind of scare, often involving something suddenly appearing near or behind Om. It works, then it works again, then it starts to feel like a trick rather than a spell.
As David puts it: “A jump scare does not a horror film make.” Back To Top Plot Holes In The Honeymoon Suite The more the hosts talk, the more Hokum starts to wobble.
The biggest issues are not small nit-picks. They are structural. A woman goes missing in a hotel with a locked honeymoon suite, a huge cellar, a dumbwaiter and various suspicious spaces, yet nobody appears to search the obvious places properly. The police drift through. The hotel geography becomes muddy. Characters are knocked out or dragged away within implausibly close range of each other. Important motivations arrive late or barely arrive at all.
Om’s backstory, involving childhood trauma and the accidental death of his mother, could have made him more sympathetic if the film had introduced it earlier. Instead, he spends too long as a one-note unpleasant writer before the emotional context turns up to explain him.
Mel, meanwhile, almost becomes the more interesting film. He is pathetic, panicked and increasingly dangerous, a man making the wrong decision at every possible turn. His actions drive much of the actual plot, and his frantic collapse has a dark comic edge that the hosts felt the film might have leaned into more.
There is a version of Hokum that is a sharper locked-room horror comedy. There is another version that is a deeper folk horror about old magic, family trauma and a haunted place. This version keeps trying to be both, with mixed results. Back To Top Is Hokum Folk Horror? This is where the episode really sharpens its knife.
Hokum has folk horror furniture: an isolated location, a witch legend, folklore books, chalk markings, a sinister subterranean space and the suggestion of an older supernatural threat. On paper, that should be enough to get the FolknHell sensors twitching.
But the hosts are not convinced.
The problem is that the witch and folklore do not feel fully integrated into the plot. The real danger comes from Mel, his cowardice, his affair, his fear and his increasingly desperate cover-up. The supernatural material creates atmosphere and scares, but it does not quite drive the story.
Andy’s take lands neatly: Hokum is “a film set in a folk horror environment, but it is not a folk horror film.”
David and Dave largely agree. The folk horror is adjacent, decorative, maybe even marketable, but not essential enough. Strip away the witch, the chalk and the haunted basement, and you still have a murder mystery and a ghost story. A messy one, but still.
That makes Hokum a useful FolknHell case study. It looks folk horror. It flirts with folk horror. It has chalk circles and witches and a hotel full of local dread. But the old forces are not really in charge. Human stupidity is. Back To Top Scores Dave gives Hokum 6 out of 10. He finds it scary and enjoyable enough, especially as a horror film, even if the folk horror credentials are thin.
David gives it 4 out of 10. The scares worked on him, loudly, but the plot flaws and over-reliance on jump scares drag it down.
Andy splits the difference with 5 out of 10, disappointed that a film with this much atmosphere and this much promise does not hold together more convincingly.
FolknHell final score: 15 out of 30 Back To Top Final Verdict Hokum is a strong first-watch scare machine, especially in a cinema, but it loses power the more you inspect the wiring.
There are moments here that really work: the cellar, the witch, the chalk circle, the awful pull of the basement, and Mel’s almost farcical descent into panic and violence. But there are also too many missed opportunities, too many underdeveloped ideas, and too many moments where the story depends on people not doing the obvious thing.
As folk horror, it is debatable at best. As horror, it has teeth. As a film, it keeps tripping over its own clever little traps. Referenced In This Episode
Damien McCarthy Adam Scott Oddity Caveat A Dark Song The Wicker Man Lord of Misrule Father Ted Ardal O’Hanlon Evil Dead 2 Summer Isle Ramsay Campbell Cut the Rope X / Twitter Ley lines Witches Chalk circles Magic mushrooms Irish folklore
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