‘Severance’ Star Goes Full Nightmare in Must-See Horror Film

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The Daily Beast

NEONGrimm’s fairy tales were often rooted in violence perpetrated against—or by—children. And Damian McCarthy uniquely taps into that classical vein with Hokum. A folk-horror thriller (May 1, in theaters) whose bloody traumas and self-destructive guilt help put a novel twist on the haunted house nightmare, this creepy nerve-rattler confirms that the director’s excellent 2024 breakout Oddity was no fluke—thanks, in no small part, to an Adam Scott lead performance that’s all the more captivating for refusing to court easy sympathy.For his third behind-the-camera feature, McCarthy returns to his native Ireland, which American author Ohm Bauman (Scott) visits following an evening in which he believes, while working at his laptop, that he sees a silhouette on his staircase.