Hokum (2026)

Stuck on the final chapter of his bestselling Conquistador trilogy, American writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) decides now is the time to head to Ireland to the hotel where his late parents spent their honeymoon.

The idea being that once there he can find the tree that was particularly special to his beloved mother and scatter their ashes amongst its roots.

Arriving at the isolated and instantly creepy Bilberry Woods Hotel, Ohm learns that the honeymoon suite has been locked and barred for years as local legend has it that a witch is trapped in there.

The writer dismisses this as "hokum" and is generally a complete arsehole to most of the staff, arrogant, self-centred and patronising.

However, it turns out this is masking a deep depression; luckily the sensitive barmaid Fiona (Florence Ordesh) realises something is wrong when she goes to his room to return personal items he'd left in the bar after an evening of heavy drinking.

She rescues him from an attempted suicide and the troubled writer is sent to the local hospital to recuperate.

Weeks later, Ohm returns to the hotel to collect his possessions and thank his saviour - only to discover that Fiona has gone missing. He is told, candidly, that the police believe she was kidnapped and killed by the local rough sleeper, Jerry (David Wilmot).

Because she saved his life, Ohm - who is now, almost, a changed man - becomes determined to get involved in the hunt for Fiona, despite the protestations of the hotel manager, Mal (Peter Coonan).

After his stellar performances in the great horror Krampus and, of course, the mind-bending Apple TV tentpole show Severance, I was excited to see Parks and Recreation star Adam Scott - another of my favourite actors -  in a new horror flick.

The incredibly well-crafted script, written by the film's director Damian McCarthy, does a splendid job of manoeuvring Scott's character believably to where he needs to be, in just the right circumstances, but my issue with Hokum is less technical and more mundane.

It very quickly becomes clear that while Ohm is 'haunted' by ghosts of his own, especially concerning the traumatic death of his mother, the central mystery he becomes entangled in is an almost stereotypically sordid, very human, whodunnit.

The supernatural elements of Hokum are thus largely incidental - although often on the dramatic side - barriers to slow down his amateur investigation. 

So, despite Adam Scott's strong performance, and the superb supporting cast, the story was very disappointing for me as I'd come for the ghosts and ghoulies. Sure, they were there, but they almost felt like an afterthought. To be fair, there's several decent "spooky things going on in the background" shots of the kind I always appreciate.

However, a final scene, with Ohm back in the hospital, suggests that - maybe - all the weird stuff Ohm witnessed could have been in his head anyway.

At around 107 minutes, Hokum is too long for the story it has to tell - even with all the character-building sub-plots - and there's definitely a sense of repetition as the tale unfolds. 

Honestly, it could probably have been trimmed down to an hour-long episode of the Twilight Zone or even a half-hour Inside No. 9 and told the same story with more concentrated impact.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Gorge (2025)

To date, I've pretty much loved everything I've seen on Apple TV: the puzzle box that is Severance is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the best TV shows ever; Slow Horses is near-perfection; the retro-futurism of Hello Tomorrow is wonderful; The Morning Show is great, engaging drama; and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a fascinating insight into the kaiju-filled world of the Monsterverse.

So, I wasn't worried clicking on The Gorge, especially as it has the added bonus of starring the flawless Anya Taylor-Joy who is incapable of making a bad movie. Even her co-star, Miles Teller (despite appearing as Reed Richards in the worst Fantastic Four movie of all time... and, yes, I'm including the unreleased Corman version), is generally seen as a safe pair of hands.

I couldn't have been more wrong. 

The Gorge is two hours and seven minutes of utter tedium. Our stars are a pair of elite snipers - Levi 'Married To His Job' Kane and Drasa - tasked with guarding a mysterious, smoke-filled, gorge and preventing whatever is down there from getting out.

Each stands guard in a tower on either side of the gorge, both forbidden to communicate with the other side.

The trouble from the get-go is that both characters are walking clichés (very early on Teller's Levi is sitting on a beach, cuddling a random dog, and I said to myself: 'I bet he writes poetry'... and an hour later, when Levi and Drasa finally get to meet he starts telling her about his poetry).

But it's also very obviously slightly racist/sexist because while both are supposedly the best at what they do, the implication is that Levi - representing America - is slightly better than - not-America - Drasa (who doesn't even warrant a surname), has slightly better technology, and so on.

For the first, painfully long, hour the couple are getting used to their new jobs and, as the months pass, starting to break the rules and communicate across the gorge.

This segment could easily have been compressed into 15 or 20 minutes, which might then have made what follows a bit more bearable.

Eventually, after a sneaky romantic rendezvous, they find themselves in the gorge, getting to the bottom of the mystery.

The trouble is there's a very strong chance that if you'd been thinking about what might be going on yourself you probably would have come up with something way more interesting than the 1950's B-movie explanation we get served up with.

At one point, I'd even wondered - when they were fighting giant insects - if The Gorge was somehow connected to Monarch: Legacy of The Monsters. But no such luck.

And the thing about the monsters our heroes find hidden in the mists is that we don't see enough of them. Perhaps horror-leaning director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) should have put more focus on the critters and less on the turgid banality of the padded first act.

There is absolutely no need for this Asylum-movie-on-an-Apple-budget to have been over two hours long. An hour and a half would have been fine and might have kept the pace (and my engagement) up a bit more. 

It's not that toothless creature feature The Gorge is really that bad, it's more a case that there's nothing memorable about it, from its generic stunts and forgettable monsters to its uninteresting explanation and predictable resolution.