"Hokum" (2026)

One of the trends I have noticed in recent horror films is a shrinking of ambition. Horror used to tell moral tales, expose cultural fears, or confront us with evil. Today, many films seem content to offer basic psychological observations. Trauma is bad. Broken relationships cause pain. People carry wounds from their past. These things are true enough, but they are hardly profound insights.

"Hokum" is a better film than "Backrooms", largely because it remembers that horror should actually be frightening. Damian McCarthy creates an eerie atmosphere, populates the story with folklore and ghostly encounters, and understands how to build suspense. The film is often unsettling, and occasionally genuinely creepy.

Its weaknesses appear when it tries to become deeper than a ghost story.

The framing tale about the conquistador and the treasure never worked for me. The supposed dilemma is artificial. We are told that the treasure can only be obtained if a bottle is broken over the boy's head. Why? The story never gives a convincing reason. There are countless other hard objects available. The dilemma exists because the story needs it to exist. Once that is accepted, the ending becomes obvious. The conquistador sacrifices himself. The boy rejects the treasure. Self-sacrifice is good. Greed is bad. It is difficult to imagine a more predictable conclusion.

More importantly, the film's various story elements never quite connect. The writer's personal failures are his own. The witch did not create them. She did not curse his family. She did not make him an absent father or a destructive husband. Likewise, the central crime of the film is simply human sin. A man cheats on his wife and covers up the affair. The witch has nothing to do with it.

Which raises an awkward question: why is there a witch at all?

She provides atmosphere, certainly. She provides scares. But she is largely unrelated to either the protagonist's struggles or the central crime. Remove her, and much of the film's meaning remains unchanged.

That is what ultimately kept "Hokum" from being more than a good ghost story. The horror elements are effective. The psychological observations are familiar. But the film never finds a way to make the supernatural and the human story belong together.