Movies & TV Hokum Hokum’s Damian McCarthy Explains the Rabbits of It All Reactor interviewed writer-director McCarthy and actor Adam Scott about the horror film By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on April 30, 2026 Credit: Neon Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Neon Hokum, latest horror movie from writer-director Damian McCarthy, features Adam Scott playing a prickly novelist named Ohm Bauman who heads to an Irish inn to spread his parents’ ashes. Without getting into spoilers, Ohm ultimately becomes trapped inside the inn, which is rumored to be haunted by an ancient evil witch, and faces many horrors, with more than a few of them bunny-shaped in nature. “Those rabbits keep seeming to find their way into the movie,” McCarthy told me in an interview with Scott in the lead up to the film’s release. He shared specific inspirations for the bunny imagery of it all as well as the desire to show a shanachie on screen, while Scott talked about what Ohm sees (and doesn’t see) in the film. Read on for the full discussion. Credit: Neon This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.   Ohm faces internal and external trauma and horror, and sometimes the viewer sees his internal horrors manifested on screen. I wondered for you as an actor, how you approached playing those scenes where things from his past were taking physical form for the viewer? Adam Scott: I think that one of the reasons I was so excited to do the movie—other than Damian’s previous movie Oddity, such a big fan of that— was the character, who’s starting as this prickly, for lack of a better word, a-hole, and then taking this journey where, unbeknownst to him, he’s figuring out how to forgive himself and forgive his father, to let himself off the hook. I think that whether or not everything that happens over the course of the movie is actually happening or not, it is a direct reflection of how he feels about himself and how he sees the world, and that starts to change as he investigates and is finally at a place where he’s able to face up to how he got here. Damian, one of the things that was so striking about the movie was the imagery. We see some of it in the trailer, and I wanted to talk to you about how you came up with that imagery, specifically the rabbit imagery. Damian McCarthy: It was going to be a long time spent with just this one character [Scott’s Ohm] in the one location. He arrives at the hotel, he interacts with the other characters, but by the time he lands in the situation he’s in and trying to escape this night, there’s nobody else there. Your production design—every ornament and painting—everything in the room becomes vital then, and those are the things that are that are watching him. And if you ever want to cut away from the actor to something else in the room… I feel like that that cut away has to be justified, and the way to do that is just with this scary imagery of ornaments and haunting clocks and those carvings of the babies, the cherubs over the fireplace; all of this just continues to tighten those screws and make the film a lot more unsettling. Courtesy of Neon And is there anything special about the rabbit theme? Damian: It seems to keep coming back, those rabbits keep seeming to find their way into the movie. And I know all that comes from, as a child, watching Watership Down, which is very frightening, and then as a film student, things like Danny Darko and Gummo, the kid who has the bunny ears, or Sexy Beast, that demonic hare that’s following Ray Winstone around the desert. Adam: Fatal Attraction. Damian: [laughs] Yeah, it’s all there. So I think all of that—it’s just an image that’s quite strange. And then you get into Alice in Wonderland, that’s what leads her into this other strange world, which I always loved as a child. I think all of that now, just as an adult and making films, seems to keep finding its way back in there. And last question: The actor who played the owner of the hotel—his voice, his delivery, is just fantastic. And I would love to hear how you found him, or if you had him in mind when you wrote that part. Damian: Brendan Conroy, an excellent Irish actor. I wanted somebody that would have that kind of gravitas… we call them in Ireland a shanachie, which would be an old Irish storyteller. And I thought, this part has got to be a shanachie. This has gotta be a guy who’s sitting down and telling everybody in the pubs some old, interesting story. I thought Brendan would be brilliant for that. And he was just lovely to work with. Hokum premieres in theaters on May 1, 2026.[end-mark] The post <i>Hokum</i>’s Damian McCarthy Explains the Rabbits of It All appeared first on Reactor.