Adam Scott spent 2026 being tormented in a haunted Irish hotel, and now the whole thing is coming to your couch. NEON's Hokum starts streaming on Hulu on October 10, 2026, landing squarely inside the platform's Halloween run. Here's everything you need to know about the release date, the plot, the cast and why horror critics have not stopped talking about it since March.
Things to Know About Hokum
- Hokum hits Hulu on October 10, 2026, three weeks before Halloween.
- Adam Scott stars as Ohm Bauman, a bitter novelist staying at a remote Irish inn.
- Writer-director Damian McCarthy also made Caveat and Oddity.
- The film grossed roughly $25 million on a $5 million budget.
Source: box office figures via Screen Rant, September 2026 - It's nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2026 Chainsaw Awards.
When Hokum Streams on Hulu
The date is locked. NEON's horror mystery begins streaming on Hulu starting October 10, 2026, per Bloody Disgusting. That's five months after the theatrical run — a long wait by NEON standards, but a strategically perfect one.
Subscribers who moved faster already had options. The film arrived on digital platforms on June 2, 2026, followed by a 4K, Blu-ray and DVD release on August 11, 2026. That physical release included a tie-in short film from director Damian McCarthy and a behind-the-scenes documentary about the movie's creepy hotel set.
October 10 puts Hokum on Hulu alongside the platform's other recent genre pickups.
What Hokum Is Actually About
The premise is deceptively simple. Novelist Ohm Bauman retreats to a remote inn to scatter his parents' ashes and becomes consumed by tales of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite; disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance force him to confront dark corners of his past.
The setting does enormous work here — a crumbling Irish hotel with a history that seems to press in from the wallpaper. Comparisons to The Shining arrived immediately, and McCarthy has leaned into that lineage rather than dodging it. He told nss magazine that the goal was for audiences to feel the place had a history, that many things had happened there.
What follows is closer to a campfire story than a haunted-house franchise entry.
Adam Scott's Performance, Explained
This is not the warm Adam Scott of Parks and Recreation. The 53-year-old actor plays Ohm as a genuinely difficult man, and that was the design from page one.
McCarthy opened up about the gamble in a May 2026 NPR interview, explaining that horror usually asks you to love the protagonist so you fear for him. He flipped it. "This guy really is not likable," McCarthy said, describing an audience that might root for the witch instead. It's a risky structure — and it's the reason the ending hits as hard as it does.
Scott, for his part, treated the unpleasantness as the job. "The script is the king," he told Moviefone in April 2026, adding that leaving a sliver of a door open lets an audience ride along with even an unpleasant man. That sliver is the whole performance.
He also had thoughts on what horror keeps underrating. Character, Scott said in an interview with Awards Radar, because effective horror movies work through the people moving through them. Coming from an actor carrying roughly three weeks of solo night shoots, it reads less like theory and more like survival.
Who Else Stars in Hokum
Scott anchors the film, but the supporting bench is stacked with Irish talent. The cast includes Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O'Connell, Brendan Conroy and Austin Amelio.
Behind the camera, the pedigree is just as loud. Spooky Pictures' Roy Lee and Steven Schneider produce alongside Image Nation's Derek Dauchy, Tailored Films' Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde and Mairtín de Barra, plus Cweature Features' Ken Kao and Josh Rosenbaum. Joseph Bishara composed the score, with cinematography by Colm Hogan.
Fans of Oddity will recognize one particular collaborator. McCarthy said he worked again with Paul McDonald, who built the wooden man for Oddity, crafting strange objects so Ohm would feel watched during his long stretches alone.
Why Critics Loved Damian McCarthy's Third Film
Hokum is McCarthy's third feature after Caveat and Oddity, and the consensus is that he cleared his own bar.
Writing for Bloody Disgusting, critic Meagan Navarro described a quaint Irish hotel with a deeply haunted history awaiting an American writer, continuing McCarthy's streak of folkloric supernatural karma with a dark sense of humor. That dark humor is the secret ingredient — the film is frightening, but it is never humorless.
Reviews praised Scott for playing an unlikable protagonist, along with the film's atmosphere and its relentless, inventive jump scares. McCarthy's process is apparently just as jumpy. "I'm just writing, trying to scare myself," he told Slant Magazine in April 2026, describing glances over his own shoulder mid-draft. You can feel that anxiety in the framing.
Recognition has followed. Hokum is nominated for Best Screenplay at this year's Chainsaw Awards, competing against Obsession, Weapons, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Faces of Death, with the ceremony airing on Shudder on October 25.
Horror fans tracking the wider genre slate should also keep an eye on Gabrielle Union's Casket Girls and Agata Trzebuchowska's directorial debut Sick.
What's Next for Adam Scott and McCarthy
Scott is not slowing down. His dark comedy thriller The Saviors, co-starring Danielle Deadwyler, debuted at SXSW and arrives in theaters on March 26, 2027. He's also filming the next season of Apple TV's Severance, though a release date remains under wraps.
For McCarthy, Hokum represents a real leap in scale. Per Slant, NEON holding worldwide rights and a major star signing on gave him more resources than Caveat or Oddity ever allowed — and he stayed stubbornly, productively Irish about it anyway.
Meanwhile, the genre calendar keeps filling up, with Happy Death Day 3 reportedly cracked by Jessica Rothe and Christopher Landon.
