‘Hokum’ director reveals the horror trope he avoided and the film that most inspired him
Damian McCarthy, the acclaimed director of the new movie Hokum, has exclusively revealed to Far Out the horror trope he chose to avoid in the film.
The Irish filmmaker rose to prominence with his horror feature efforts Caveat and Oddity, released in 2020 and 2024 respectively, before now turning his attention to the gothic supernatural sub-genre in Hokum, which was released in cinemas on May 1st.
However, in a new interview with Far Out, McCarthy explained how he wanted to attempt suspending disbelief, to a certain extent, in his movie, and the lengths he went to in order to avoid falling into the pitfalls of certain horror tropes.
The director first said he desired to create a world devoid of modern technology, noting, “Just pretend it’s a world where there’s no mobile phones.” However, the threads of this idea then extended far further into the film, exposing the areas of originality he truly sought to look into.
Proving his point, McCarthy said, “I watch a lot of horror films,” before adding, “And there is always that moment where maybe after the midpoint or somewhere, somebody shows up who knows everything that’s going on, and they explain it all for ten minutes, and then the story continues again. Now they know what they’re dealing with.”
He continued: “I just thought, again, it’s like the mobile phone, why bother with that? Just set it up as quickly as possible.”
In the act of resisting the common horror trope of exposition, Hokum explains the premise from the beginning that if the characters encounter a witch, they could be “dragged off to hell,” which is clearly a much simpler method of storytelling, in McCarthy’s view.
In other cases, “It’s never interested me to over-explain these things,” he said, adding, “It was the same with my other two feature films; you just hint at it, and the audience has brilliant imaginations anyway, they’ve seen more than enough horror films to be able to fill in all this stuff themselves.”
Much like McCarthy’s other horror efforts, Hokum has been widely praised by critics, particularly in terms of the performance by Adam Scott, who leads the cast.
McCarthy’s favourite horror film
Despite the ways in which the director outlined the style of Hokum being different from other classics of the horror genre, he was still keen to point out how a pivotal film of influence, Evil Dead II, directed by Sam Raimi, inspired his path.
“For me, I don’t know if I’d be making films if I hadn’t seen that; that was life-changing,” the director candidly admitted to Far Out.
“When I first saw it, I was like 16 or 17 and just watched it every single day for months and months,” he explained. “So this is kind of finally, even though it’s a very, very different film from that…”
Although still emphasising the differences between Hokum and Evil Dead II, it was clear that the film still vitally influenced McCarthy, as he added: “I always tried to lean into that fine line between comedy and horror, the way Raimi has always so brilliantly done.”
Hokum is in cinemas now.
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