A horrifying face in the teaser for Hokum. NEON

Watch: The 'Hokum' teaser absolutely terrified us

Originally posted on Nerdist | By Kyle Anderson | Last updated Dec 17, 2025 10:01 PM ET

Horror is killing it lately, and I don’t even think that pun was intended. Some incredible voices have sprung up in the genre in the past few years, with the likes of Zach Cregger, Osgood Perkins, and the Philippou brothers all coming out with multiple terrifying standouts. Add to that last Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy whose pair of horror offerings—Caveat and Oddity—play on the fear of, among other things, cursed objects and uncanny weirdness. His next film is Hokum, which won’t come out until May. However, the 40-second teaser just came out and it scared the absolute crap out of us.

Take a look. IF YOU DARE (sorry).

It's been waiting. HOKUM. Written and directed by Damian McCarthy. Starring Adam Scott. In theaters May 1. pic.twitter.com/U1j2VzwQmu
— NEON (@neonrated) December 15, 2025

What is the deal with that…horse person? Like what is that?!? This teaser is the embodiment of teasing. More a mood piece than anything, we get the smallest of snippets of moments of Adam Scott looking at stuff and an old guy talking about witches in the background. And it’s yet another offering from NEON, the distributor that gave us Longlegs.

While we don’t have a ton of info from the trailer, we do have a brief outline. Scott plays a horror novelist who visits a remote Irish inn to spread his parents’ ashes, unaware of rumors it is haunted by a witch. This places Hokum seemingly right in line with McCarthy’s previous Oddity, in which murder, ghosts, and living homunculi descend on a home in the Irish countryside. The lead character in that movie owns a shop of cursed objects, one of which is a haunted hotel bell. We sure seem to see that at the end of teaser. It might just be an Easter egg, as a very weird drum-playing rabbit toy from Caveat shows up in Oddity. But we wouldn’t put it past McCarthy!

This teaser puts Hokum right at the top of our anticipated horror of 2026 list. May 1 can’t get here soon enough.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

This article first appeared on Nerdist and was syndicated with permission.

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