7 Horror Movies To Watch Next If You Loved 'Hokum'
Hokum (2026) is a must-see for modern horror fans, with a throwback sensibility that doesn’t undercut the movie’s ability to shift into scary imagery or shocking twists when it wants to. The film, which follows an American writer visiting rural Ireland and ends up at a haunted hotel, takes its time with the premise and the presentation to deliver an unforgettably creepy experience.
Hokum isn’t necessarily reinventing the genre, but it does a great job of showcasing what makes it so compelling in the first place. It shares pacing with other scary movies from years gone by, as well as an ability to blend the supernatural horror with human emotion that makes it especially effective. If you loved Hokum, then you need to make sure you’ve checked out these other seven great horror movies on streamers like Hulu, HBO Max, and more.
Directed and written by Hokum filmmaker Damian McCarthy, fans of that movie’s atmospheric approach and unsettling supernatural forces will love Oddity. The film shares the thematic core, grounded characters, and horrifying touches of Hokum, focusing on a blind clairvoyant who empowers a wooden golem while searching for more information about her sister’s death.
The same sense of character depth and unsettling horror at play in Hokum is present in Oddity, which benefits from a deliberate pace that Hokum also indulges in. Creepy and somber, Oddity—as well as McCarthy’s directorial debut, Caveat (2020)—benefit from the director’s handle on slow-burn scares that give way to some really frightening touches. While audiences looking for something a bit livelier and faster-paced might be bored, the creepy aura surrounding Oddity helps it stand out.
Hokum is ultimately a tragic film about grief and guilt, something that it shares with the similarly rural tale at the heart of Starve Acre. Focusing on a husband and wife who struggle with a terrible loss and the potential cost it would take to undo it, Starve Acre uses superstition and the unseen world to tackle a tale about guilt and grief.
Both movies benefit from complex characters that don’t take away from the horror, especially as their worst aspects come to life in harrowing ways. Not for the faint of heart and at times playing out like the twisted horror cousin of Hamnet (2025), Starve Acre’s heavy subject matter might scare off some viewers, but it’s got enough great elements to make it a must-watch for fans of Hokum and Damian McCarthy’s style of horror.
Similar to Hokum in its use of a serene setting for scary turns, Midsommar has some very unsettling aspects that make it one of the strangest—and most effective—scary movies in recent memory. The film follows a group of college students as they make their way to a festival in Sweden, which steadily reveals the darker side of the rural community’s practices.
Playing out like the twisted fusion of The Wicker Man (1973) and Hereditary (2018), Midsommar goes to some very uncomfortable places without ever losing sight of the surprising flashes of humanity or weight of tragedy that make Hokum also engaging. Both films utilize the same general playbook for storytelling while taking very different approaches to their exploration of grief and guilt.
Damian McCarthy shares a sensibility with Mike Flanagan, which makes films like Oculus ideal after you finish Hokum. Starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites as siblings stuck in a cycle surrounding a supposedly haunted mirror, the deliberate pacing and ambiguous touches of Oculus will entice anyone who enjoyed the way Hokum plays with expectation and only slowly reveals more about the supernatural force at play in the film.
Fans of McCarthy would do well to also try out the somber and scary work Flannigan has done in television, such as The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), which utilize the longer TV format to their advantage. Still, there’s something surreally effective about Oculus’ grim imagery and strange touches.
Hokum uses the traditional mechanics of a haunted house story to tell a tale about terrible choices and the importance of guilt as a sign of empathy, similar to how Diabolic uses a demonic possession storyline as a chance to discuss generational trauma in religious institutions. Focusing on a young woman who was banished from the Mormon church in her youth but is forced to revisit the faith to discover what is affecting her mind, Diabolic takes some harrowing swings that highlight Daniel J. Phillips’ skills as a filmmaker and his interest in blending scary stories with real tragedies.
Hokum does something similar, with both films using their frightening imagery and somber tones to explore heavy topics that occur in real life. While it’s a bit more sexually explicit and gory than Hokum, fans of the latter will enjoy the way Diabolic plays out.
A prime example of a gothic horror in cinematic history, The Innocents is a creepy film about a governess at a wealthy estate who suspects the children under her care are possessed. The atmosphere is crucial to The Innocents, with slowly developing scares landing all the harder because of the build-up that the film allows itself to indulge in.
Similar to Hokum, The Innocents is a movie that thrives when it gets the chance to take its time, delving into the characters and their various complexities. A spiritual predecessor to films like The Others (2001) and arguably even Hokum, The Innocents might be considered dull by some modern audiences, but the natural tension and gorgeous cinematography are perfect for anyone who appreciated Hokum’s approach to horror.
One of the ur-examples of modern slow-burn horror, The Amityville Horror has the benefit of influencing countless generations of horror filmmakers, giving it an implicit connection to plenty of other approaches to the genre. Focusing on a family that moves into a haunted house and discovers that reputation wasn’t for nothing, the cursed nature of the house and the secrets of the basement will ring true for anyone who really enjoyed the unsettling reveals baked into Hokum.
While there are plenty of sequels and remakes of this story, the best cinematic version of The Amityville Horror remains the original film, with a grounded pace that gives way to strange happenings, scary concepts, and a threat that is more effective when unseen than the other way around.
