Black Bear has confirmed that HOKUM, the new horror film starring Adam Scott, will arrive in UK and Irish cinemas on 1 May 2026. It is a tight, unsettling premise on paper, the kind that leans into atmosphere and slow creeping dread rather than noise, and it already feels built for late night screenings and hushed audiences.
The film is written and directed by Damian McCarthy, who handles both script and direction, giving the project a clear singular voice. Adam Scott leads the cast as Ohm Bauman, joined by Peter Coonan, David Wilmot and Austin Amelio, forming a small but focused ensemble around one very personal story.
Scott plays a reclusive novelist who retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes. It should be a quiet, private trip. Instead, the staff begin sharing stories about an ancient witch said to haunt the honeymoon suite, and those tales slowly burrow into his thoughts. What starts as unease soon tips into something darker, as troubling visions surface and a sudden disappearance pulls him deeper into a nightmare he can no longer ignore.
As the line between memory and myth begins to blur, Bauman finds himself forced to confront the most painful corners of his past. HOKUM sets out to trap its lead character, and the audience with him, inside an isolated setting where every whisper feels loaded and every shadow suggests something waiting.
With its Irish backdrop, a solitary central performance from Scott, and McCarthy guiding both the page and the camera, HOKUM looks poised to deliver an intimate strain of horror that creeps under the skin rather than shouts. UK and Irish cinemagoers will be able to see it for themselves when it opens on 1 May 2026.
