‘Hokum’ Director Says His Next Film Will Be the “Ultimate Haunted House Horror Movie” [Exclusive]

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Damian McCarthy knows what scares you. After three feature films, it’s clear that the Irish filmmaker is one of the most tapped-in genre directors when it comes to producing old-school, truly terrifying horror. His second film, Oddity, was even named Dread Central’s favorite horror movie of 2024 for being out-of-this-world scary. And now we’ve got word on what his fourth movie will look like, and it already has me freaked out.

I recently had the chance to sit down with the visionary filmmaker to discuss his new film, Hokum, in theaters May 1, which was so panic-inducing that I called it “gratuitously frightening hotel horrors” in my 4-star review out of its SXSW World Premiere just last month.

During the interview, McCarthy opened the doors slightly about his next project. All three of his previous films have easily proven that he’s a filmmaker with a penchant for producing classical, gothic scares, so when he described his next movie as the “ultimate haunted house horror movie,” I nearly blew a gasket. Here’s what he had to say:

“After making three feature horror films and ten horror shorts, I feel now like something has clicked for me, in terms of how to craft a scare,” he tells me.

“I really feel like if I was to make another horror film, I think I’d really nail it,” he continues. “I have ideas of how I could build on everything I’ve learned over the last few years. For my next film, I definitely want to make the ultimate haunted house movie. I have the script … and I think that next I definitely want to make one more out-and-out horror movie and just apply everything I’ve learned to the ultimate haunted house horror movie! That would be the plan.”