Hobo Code

Passenger (2026) - Øvredal André Øvredal, Norwegian director behind Troll Hunter, Autopsy of Jane Doe and The Last Voyage of Demeter, created a little corner for himself in the American horror film scene with successful modest budget projects over the years. And his latest, Passenger, starring Lou Llobel and Jacob Scipio as a young couple in love, on the road together is a tight, surprisingly good horror film that has plenty of scares.

Tyler (Scipio) and Maddie (Llobel) are city folks embarking on a new life on the road in a bougie Mercedes van. Their whole lives are packed in the van and they are hitting the road. It's the opposite of Nomadland where people are living out of their vans out of economic necessity, but these young couples are what the Winnebago community in a trailer park calls "Air bnb on wheels" folks.

It's Tyler's idea of retiring early and being free on the road, but Maddie is not so sure. It is extra hard to object, when he puts a lot of effort into this new life and thinks their love will be the only thing that they need. The thing is, any way you cut it, they are an adorable couple and we don't want anything bad to happen to them. But things start happening.

While they are on the road, they witness the aftermath of a brutal car crash. Since then, Maddie is seeing a scary figure in the corner of her eyes. There are deep scratch marks on the side of the van, which they later find out that it's a warning sign in a hobo code to be on the lookout for danger.

Their road trip on Route 66 turns out to be less ideal than Tyler anticipated, but downright scary with this 'passenger' attaching itself to them.

The couple learns that the only way to lose this scary ghoul is driving to the creepy abandoned church of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, somewhere off the beaten path in the desert near Grand Junction,CO.

In Passenger, jump scares are plenty and tension building is top notch. Øvredal uses all the tricks in the scary road movie genre tropes - car engine stalling, flat tires in the middle of nowhere, scary parking spaces at night with unreliable, flickering street lights combined with supernatural elements, debunking the American romanticism of hitting the road.

Dumb Waiter

Hokum (2026) - McCarthy Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy's third outing has all the hallmarks of his two very scary predecessors: everything has to do with an elaborate scheme taking place in one isolated location. Once the mechanics of action are laid out- which takes some time, the film begins to click in its scary ways. And as with Caveat and Oddity, Hokum is scary, good fun.

American writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), is visiting Bilberry Woods Hotel for two reasons- to finish the ending of his Conquistador trilogy and scatter his parents ashes in nearby woods, because his parents stayed in the hotel when they were honeymooning. But Ohm is not a friendly fellow. He is arrogant and dismissive. He snaps at the old proprietor (Brendan Conroy) of the inn telling a spooky tale to the local children about how he trapped a witch in his hotel, calling him an old fool believing in superstitions. He admonishes Alby (Will O'Connell), a bell hop who is an aspiring writer, for asking for his autograph, rude to Fiona (Florence Odesh) the barkeep, all at his arrival. He later bonds with Fiona a little bit, because she reminds him of his dead mother.

The rumor has it, there's a witch who is haunting the place and the honeymoon suite is off limits because of that. You know that the suite is going to be opened up and will be the main location for most of the action taking place later on. Ohm is also carrying the guilt of the accidental death of his mother when he was a child. We see the glimpse of her ghost still haunting him and that he is in a depressive state.

Ohm encounters Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in his van and drinking mushroom laced milk in the woods. Taking Jerry as a quack, Ohm dismisses his telltale stories about the witch and haunting of the hotel.

After Fiona and Alby discovering Ohm hanging from the ceiling, from an apparent suicide attempt, Ohm is hospitalized and recovers few weeks later. When he comes back to the hotel to gather his stuff, Ohm finds the hotel is closing for the season and Fiona has gone missing since Halloween night a couple of weeks back. Jerry is a prime suspect in Fiona's disappearance. Ohm runs into him in the woods again and Jerry suggests breaking in to the hotel after everyone clears out. Jerry is certain that they are keeping Fiona up in the Honeymoon suite.

The rest is pure McCarthy - repetition of the elevator and dumb waiter going up and down, the secret corridors in the basement, isolation and suffocation anxiety, the cat and mouse game with folklore tinged supernatural occurances. Plenty of jumpscare and hallucinogenic imagery- reoccuring rabbit creature references throughout his filmography, all mingle perfectly with the tense atmosphere McCarthy creates (out of little to nothing). Adam Scott playing the world-class asshole also helps with absurd humor. All the creepy details McCarthy puts in - the cherubic sculptures, the creepy rabbit mask, Fiona's rabbit costume, the grandfather clock, etc.

Hokum might not be as scary as Oddity, but it shows what McCarthy is capable of with a bigger budget and a Hollywood actor. I can't wait to see more from McCarthy.

Unpredictable

Keeper (2025) - Perkins As in his other films - Longlegs, Monkey, Grethel and Hansel, Osgood Perkins has a penchant for creating dread with eerie images, this cabin in the woods movie is no exception. From the get-go, even before the ill-fated couple Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) arrive at the handsome, all-windows-n-angles modern log cabin, we see the glimpse of various women and their eventual fate in a series of striking portraits.

Once we are in the cabin, Liz feels an ominous presence in the dark corners and shadows. Maybe this trip upstate with someone she doesn't know well enough, for a city rat like Liz, wasn't a good idea. There's a cake in a box with smudged fingerprints sitting on the kitchen counter. It's from a caretaker Malcolm says, off-handedly. An unexpected, awkward visit from Malcolm's asshole brother with his Eastern European girlfriend, leaves Liz a little more rattled. After eating the whole chocolate cake in the middle of the night, creepy things start happening and Liz doesn't really know if they are dreams or real.

Malcolm is called off for his job as a doctor into the city, leaving Liz all alone. She is haunted by the vision of the women seen in the beginning of the film as well as feeling that she is not alone in the cabin.

The images Perkins and DP Jeremy Cox (Monkey) are truly unsettling. The creatures are extremely creepy and the competing saturated color palate is beautiful and dark and very effective for the location. Some transition shots are stunning, comparable to that of Park Chanwook even, the king of transition shots. Love his play with background and foreground perspectives also. Keeper develops into a delicious folk horror territory, but not a clearly defined plot. And like other Perkins films, narrative thread is not the selling point, but atmosphere is and unsettling images are. This film has a lot of that.

Maslany, who has one of the most interesting faces in cinema and serves as one of the executive producers of the film, is all game for a small cast and one location, atmospheric horror. Her natural delivery and demeanor, her quick wit is highlighted in basically a one woman show. I can see if it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.

Pet Sound

Rabbit Trap (2025) - Chainey This is the second British (well, Scottish and Welsh) film I saw this year that features a rabbit folklore -where as Starve Acre takes place on the Scottish moors, Bryn Chainey's Rabbit Trap takes place in Wales. Rabbits or Hares in Welsh folklore are depicted as a connection to the spirit world and fertility. Known as the pwca in Wales, rabbits are shapeshifting creatures that bring both good and bad fortunes.

A childless musician couple from London - Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne Davenport (Rosy McEwen), have moved into a secluded cottage to finish their album. Equipped with recorders and a soundsystem, they are exploring the new sound in the Welsh woods for inspiration. One day in the woods, doing the field recording, Darcy hears distinctly human voices in the woods. Then he finds a circle made of white stones in the floorbed of the forest. Soon, he encounters a young person of indeterminate age and sex (Jade Croot), who claims that they are from a nearby village. They know places in the woods that would interest the Davenports.

The child takes a shine on Daphne and their visitation to the cottage becomes more frequent. But the child's insistence and clinginess becomes more intense and uncomfortable, first for Darcy, then eventually for Daphne. There's something supernatural definitely in the woods and the child is not what they say they are.

Moody and trippy, both cinematography (Dp, Andreas Johannessen) and sound design are terrific. Verging on magic realism, the moss and fungus invading the interior of the cottage as Davenports are put under the spell of the child is truly a wonder (thanks to production designer Lucie Red). Patel and McEwen are both fantastic as a couple who share an unspoken, probably some dark backstory, and have terrific chemistry together. But it's young Jade Croot who shines as a mysterious child who throws themselves in the lives of Davenport, and who might not be human at all. Croot's performance has the similar intensity as young Barry Keogan in Lanthimos's Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Rabbit Trap is a terrific folk horror/fantasy film that is beautifully crafted and put together with stellar performances. Now streaming on multiple platforms.

Hare to the Throne

Starve Acre (2023) - Kokotajlo Parents' grief manifests into a supernatural horror in Daniel Kokotajlo's moody, slow burn Starve Acre, based on a book by Andrew Michael Hurley who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Richard (Matt Smith) has moved back to his father's estate with his family - his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark of Saint Maude) and their young son Ewan. He is a lecturer of archeology in nearby university. With his long hair and an outsider status, Richard doesn't really get along with his colleagues and neither does Ewan, who demonstrates violent tendencies. Jules is worried about their child but Richard is not. Richard's distance from his family stems from the physical abuse he received from his father when he was a young boy. He chastises his neighbor Gordon for telling the boy about the local folktale of Jack Grey and an oak tree that can reanimate the dead. Country folks are backward and full of superstitions. But the family can't shake off the feeling that there is something spooky about the nature that surrounds their house.

Ewan suddenly dies from an asthma attack and it pulls Richard and Jules farther apart. Guilt stricken and grieving, Jules can hardly get out of bed and Richard spends much time alone digging through the mud in the yard. Harrie (Erin Richards), Juliette's sister, comes to stay to comfort the grieving mother. It's the séance performed by Mrs. Ford, a neighbor that puts the idea in Jules' head that Ewan's spirit is still around.

Richard experiences a supernatural phenomenon when the bones of a hare he dug up near the oak tree of the old folklore, slowly starts to reanimate Hellraiser style - tissues appearing around the bones, then organs and muscles, eyes and hair. Is he imagining things out of grief or does the folktale about the oak tree and Jack Grey contain some sort of truth? He first hides this ungodly occurrence. But soon enough, a fully reanimated large hare is hopping around in their house. They release the hare to the wild but it comes back, wrecking havoc in the grieving parents' minds. According to Starve Acre, a research book left by Richard's father, they need three sacrifices to finish the ritual.

Smith and Clark are superb as grieving parents who are desperate to hold on to the idea of their dead son coming back, even if it takes a physical form of an animal. Cinematographer Adam Scarth’s expansive landscape shots and tinkling score by Matthew Herbert help accentuate the film’s sodden and moody tone. Grief and the power of folklore make great combination for a creating great unsettling, atmospheric horror. Starve Acre is one of the very fine English folk horror films to come out in recent years.