New horror movie Hokum may be about a haunted hotel, but director Damian McCarthy promises it’s nothing like Stephen King adaptation The Shining

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Damian McCarthy’s new horror movie Hokum may be set in a creepy hotel but it couldn’t be further from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the writer-director insists.

In the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 on the cover, the Irish filmmaker recalled how he actively tried to avoid being inspired by the acclaimed Stephen King adaptation – and that he initially found it dangerously “tempting” to lift certain scenes and scares.

“It was almost like, ‘We really can’t do anything that was done in that because it’s been done. It’s got its own voice.’ It was one we were trying to avoid,” McCarthy noted.

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While The Shining sees Jack Nicholson’s writer Jack Torrance driven mad by the remote resort he’s been employed at over the winter, Hokum centers on Ohm (Adam Scott), a horror novelist who travels to rural Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes. Unfortunately for him, though, the inn in which he’s booked to stay is supposedly haunted by an ancient witch – and is a hub for some of the area’s most peculiar locals, too. Peter Coonan (Bad Sisters), Will O’Connell (Game of Thrones), David Wilmot (Bodkin), Florence Ordesh (Foundation), and Austin Amelio (Fear the Walking Dead) round out the supporting cast.