This article contains major spoilers about Hokum.Hokum is not a light-hearted horror film, but its director reveals that the ending was almost even darker.
Hokum is the latest from director Damian McCarthy, who previously helmed Oddity in 2024. The film stars Adam Scott as horror writer Ohm Bauman, who retreats to a creepy hotel in Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to discover that the property is allegedly haunted by a witch. Hokum’s cast also includes Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Will O’Connell, and Florence Ordesh.
In an interview with Inverse, McCarthy reveals that protagonist Ohm actually died in the original version of Hokum’s script. The writer-director would have instead seen Ohm still trapped in the basement dumbwaiter, never making it out before getting captured by the witch. The director also connects this to the more hopeful ending to Ohm’s novels, in a quote detailed below:
“In the original scripts, he doesn’t survive. He doesn’t make it out of the basement at all. It just felt too bleak. I was going, ‘Is anybody going to rewatch this? Is it going to be entertaining?’
It’s said at the start that if [The Conquistadors] could find a skull, it would mean hope. And then there’s a [ram] skull lying in the desert. That’s kind of showing that what Ohm’s been through in the hotel has changed him.”
As it stands, Hokum is a pretty dark film. Early on, audiences are already alerted to the fact that both of Ohm’s parents are dead, and he is using this trip as a means of scattering their ashes. The extent of his grief, especially as he rudely lashes out against well-intentioned characters like Alby and Fiona, is apparent.
This is even more so the case when Ohm makes a suicide attempt on the hotel grounds. Though surviving, Ohm is not the only character to be unstable or meet an unfortunate fate in the film.
Perhaps the movie’s darkest element is the reveal that Ohm’s mother, who the character had previously stated died after being shot on her way home from work, was actually killed by 10-year-old Ohm. As a child, he had been playing with his father’s gun when it fired into his mother’s face, killing her. This plot point hits home the film’s themes of guilt and regret, adding to the grief present throughout.
An interesting facet of McCarthy’s changed ending is how it maps on to Ohm’s own outlook on life throughout the course of the film. Upon arrival at the hotel, he is a pessimist who wants to end his own book trilogy with both the Conquistador and the young boy dying in the desert.
Fiona lets Ohm know that she would not want to read that book, which could even be a self-inserting harbinger of hope written in by McCarthy. Rather than make a film only about the pain and destruction that loss and one horrific mistake can cause, Hokum’s ending makes it turn into a story about one man’s turn to optimism.
Through his traumatic past and the events of Hokum, Ohm is on the path to becoming a better human being.
9/10
Release Date
May 1, 2026
Runtime
101 Minutes
Director
Damian McCarthy
Writers
Damian McCarthy