I love a movie plot twist when it’s done right, and I think one of the latest of the new horror movies, Hokum, definitely has a thinker at the end to ponder. I found the new movie starring Severance’s Adam Scott to be incredibly spooky while having real heart at the center of it, too. It had me on the edge of my seat, and I was very invested in what was going to happen to Scott’s novelist character of Ohm as he navigates a haunted hotel.
In Hokum, Ohm travels to a hotel in Ireland to spread the ashes of his dead parents at the place where they had their honeymoon. When he meets Fiona, the hotel’s bartender on his first night, and she saves his life before going missing, he decides to go to the locked-down honeymoon suite to find her before getting stuck there with a lot of creepy vibes and the dead body of Fiona lying in a dumbwaiter. But there’s something that happens during the ending of Hokum, which rightfully received rave reviews, that’s especially worth discussing. Let’s get into it.
The Moment In Hokum That Had Me Going ‘Wait… What?’
The brunt of Hokum’s scares happens when Ohm decides to make his way into the honeymoon suite of the hotel he’s staying at in the Irish countryside and finds himself locked in. While trapped there, he finds Fiona, the bartender he’s looking for, unfortunately, dead. He also meets a terrifying witch, potentially finds himself in a gateway to hell by the end, when she locks him in the hotel’s basement and comes across the ghost of his mother, whom he accidentally killed as a child while playing with a shotgun.
Somehow, Ohm survives the whole affair and is lucky to be alive, having his wounds tended to at the hospital. Then, he’s paid a visit from the bellboy, Alby, whom he was quite rude to earlier in the film. Alby tells Ohm that he has actually spiked the whiskey he gave him the night he went to the honeymoon suite with quite a bit of magic mushroom powder. So, the question on my mind is how much was real and how much was a bad trip on mushrooms?
What The Magic Mushroom Reveal Could Mean
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and the ending definitely opens up a lot of interpretation regarding what could have happened. On one hand, there’s the funny thought that Ohm was tripping out in the honeymoon suite the entire time, and none of the supernatural things like the ghost, the witch, or that terrifying bulgy-eyed monster, which writer/director Damien McCarthy told CinemaBlend is named Jack The Jackass, who shows up in the TV set, were all in his head. However, from a storytelling perspective, I don’t think that’s quite as fun as Ohm actually seeing these things and them being real.
The biggest hint to the movie’s event being true for me comes from Jerry (who makes the mushroom powder himself). Earlier in the movie, he says that the stuff opens up one’s mind to seeing the supernatural. While that might be a bunch of hokum if I heard that in real life, I absolutely believe that hotel is haunted and love the idea of a hallucinogen like magic mushrooms being a gateway into the spiritual world in a movie like this. I also like the idea of the mushrooms/access to the spirit world actually helping him on his terrifying haunted hotel stay.
If the magic mushrooms allowed him to see the ghost of his mother, then they actually saved him because getting to see her helped him process his guilt around killing her as a child and ultimately made him escape the hotel and fight for his life rather than giving in to the intense sadness that led him to attempt suicide earlier in the film.
One Hint The Writer/Director Gave Has Me Wanting To Rewatch It
Of course, when I watch a movie like Hokum, I’m so curious about the intentions of the filmmakers. When McCarthy talked to Time about the ending, he had this to say about it:
I like the idea that some of it is open to interpretation and there is a discussion to be had… For me, it's pretty clear which parts of it are absolutely a trip and which aren't.
Well, isn’t this interesting? He confirms that some of the movie is absolutely part of the mushroom trip, and some of it is absolutely real. For those who want to be able to differentiate between the two, he actually was detail-oriented enough to leave a clue within the movie for those who want to know. In his words:
If you're seeing something from his POV, when the camera turns and you get the reverse shot, just take a look at whether what he's seeing is reflected in his glasses. That's the way into it.
Whoa, now this is fun because there’s actually a way the audience can tell what’s real and what’s not in Hokum. I’ll definitely have to rewatch the movie with a close eye on this, but until then, I definitely have one theory about what was fully in his imagination. I think Jack the Jackass is definitely a hallucination because he didn’t have any distinct connections to the witch. Also, McCarthy told CinemaBlend that he was watching a “warped” version of a children's TV show he was watching when he accidentally shot his mother.
I think because he was seeing his mother’s ghost, he was processing the moment, and the Jack the Jackass moment was part of his trip, while the rest was real, but that’s just my reading of it. What’s fun is it’s up for interpretation, so you might have your own thoughts on what was real and what was a trip. Hokum is definitely a highlight among 2026 movie releases thus far, and I can’t wait to rewatch it after learning about the magic mushroom reveal as well.
