Published Jun 5, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
Week after week, it feels like another win for horror. ***Obsession ***and ***Backrooms ***have both managed to beat out the latest ***Star Wars ***movie for the #1 and #2 spots. *Obsession *has already grossed over 100x its original production budget in worldwide earnings, and unlike most films that see their numbers shrink week over week, *Obsession *has actually been increasing its box office haul each week since release.
But the winning streak for indie horror does not stop at the cinema doors. PVOD is telling the same story. A new R-rated indie horror film starring ***Severance ***star Adam Scott and directed by **Damian McCarthy **of ***Oddity ***fame opened in theaters last month to a strong reception. The film earned a stellar 89% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And it isn’t one of those pretentious, artsy horror movies either. Audiences liked it just as much, giving it an 83% audience score.
That film is Hokum. It was recently released on digital platforms for rent and purchase on June 2, and it has already become a big hit. According to FlixPatrol, it is currently the **#4 most popular movie **on the Apple TV Store in the United States. It is also sitting in the Top 3 in countries like the UAE, Egypt, and Canada, and this momentum is only expected to grow as word of mouth spreads.
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
*Hokum *stars Scott as a bitter American horror novelist who travels to a remote inn in Ireland to scatter the ashes of his late parents. But when a member of the hotel staff mysteriously vanishes, he begins to investigate, and his search eventually leads him to the inn’s permanently sealed honeymoon suite, which is rumored to be haunted by a witch. It is not a story that is trying to reinvent the wheel. Haunted hotel stories have a long and well-worn lineage, from ***The Shining ***to 1408, all the way to even the more recent ***Widow’s Bay ***series on Apple TV+, which quietly features one of the best haunted hotel stories in recent years.
What sets *Hokum *apart is Scott’s caustic, thoroughly watchable performance and a rich folk horror atmosphere that leans hard into its Irish Halloween setting. The film may be a touch light on pure jump scares, but it more than makes up for it with genuine dread and the kind of slow-burn tension that tends to stick with audiences well after the credits roll. For horror fans who have been riding this wave of indie horror, *Hokum *is shaping up to be the next essential watch.
*Hokum *is available for rent or purchase on the Apple TV Store.
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Damian McCarthy