Entertainment

Neil Sedaka, songwriter and hitmaker over multiple generations, dies at 86

Published

3 months ago

February 28, 2026

Neil Sedaka, songwriter and hitmaker over multiple generations, dies at 86

Neil Sedaka, an irrepressible songsmith who parlayed his compositional skills into pop stardom during the height of the Brill Building era in the 1960s and later staged an easy-listening comeback in the 1970s, has died at age 86. No cause of death was immediately available.

“Our family is devastated by the sudden passing of our beloved husband, father and grandfather, Neil Sedaka,” the songwriter’s family wrote in a statement to The Times. “A true rock and roll legend, an inspiration to millions, but most importantly, at least to those of us who were lucky enough to know him, an incredible human being who will be deeply missed.”

A chipper melodicist who never attempted to disguise his sentimental streak, Sedaka emerged at the moment rock ’n’ roll’s initial big bang started to fizzle. As a songwriter and performer, Sedaka treated rock ’n’ roll as another fad to be exploited, crafting cheerful, vivacious tunes targeted at teens who’d bop along to “Stupid Cupid” and swoon to “Where the Boys Are,” to name two songs he and lyricist Howard Greenfield wrote for early-’60s pop idol Connie Francis. Sedaka himself became a star through such bright confections as “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” the 1962 chart-topper that became his signature song.

Already falling out of fashion by the time the Beatles arrived in the United States, Sedaka didn’t weather the rise of the British Invasion: By the end of the 1960s, his lack of a record label caused him to leave the States for England. Unlike his Brill Building peer Carole King — he wrote “Oh! Carol,” his first big hit, about her — Sedaka wasn’t able to refashion himself as a hip singer-songwriter. Instead, he relied on showbiz hustle and savvy commercial instincts, teaming up with the musicians that became the iconoclastic hitmakers 10cc on records that positioned Sedaka squarely in the soft-rock mainstream. Elton John signed the veteran vocalist to his fledgling label Rocket and Sedaka immediately had two No. 1 hits with “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood,” a success compounded by Captain & Tennille taking “Love Will Keep Us Together,” a tune from one of Sedaka’s albums with 10cc, to No. 1 in 1975.

Sedaka’s second stint in the spotlight didn’t last much longer than his first flush of stardom — by 1980, he was no longer a Top 40 artist — but his ’70s comeback cemented his status as a showbiz fixture, allowing him to carve out a career onstage and, at times, onscreen. Occasionally, the world would turn and place Sedaka back in the mainstream, as when he appeared on “American Idol” in the early 2000s or when his 1971 composition “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?” was rejiggered into the World Cup novelty anthem “(Is This the Way to) The World Cup” in 2006.

Neil Sedaka in 1960.

(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

A descendant of Turkish and Ashkenazi Jews, Neil Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on March 13, 1939. Growing up in Brighton Beach, Sedaka exhibited a musical proclivity at an early age, earning a piano scholarship to Juilliard’s children’s division when he was 8 years old. He studied classical piano for the next few years, his ears being drawn to pop music all the while. At the age of 13, he happened to meet a neighbor when they were both vacationing at a Catskills resort. She brought him to meet her son, an aspiring lyricist named Howard Greenfield, and the pair quickly became a songwriting team, with Greenfield writing the words and Sedaka handling the music.

As Sedaka and Greenfield developed their creative partnership, Sedaka sang in the Linc-Tones, a vocal group that evolved into the Tokens just prior to his departure; he left them prior to their hit single “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Although he didn’t abandon his dreams of performing, Sedaka concentrated on songwriting with Greenfield. Attempting to gain a foothold in the Brill Building, the pair first caught the attention of Jerry Wexler, who had Clyde McPhatter and LaVern Baker cut a couple of their tunes. Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus suggested to Sedaka and Greenfield that they would have better luck at 1650 Broadway, where Al Nevins and Don Kirshner had just opened their publishing company Aldon Music.

Aldon signed Sedaka and Greenfield to a publishing deal — still a minor, Sedaka needed his mother to sign in his stead — and the pair had their first big hit when Connie Francis took “Stupid Cupid” into the Top 20 in 1958. Not long after, Sedaka signed with RCA Records as a performer. “The Diary,” inspired by Francis refusing Sedaka and Greenfield access to her diary, became Sedaka’s first hit single in 1958 after the doo-wop group Little Anthony and the Imperials passed on the chance to record it first. Sedaka had difficulty delivering a successful sequel to his initial hit for RCA, so he constructed “Oh! Carol” to mimic the lovelorn yet sweet sounds filling the charts in 1959. Sedaka’s gambit paid off: “Oh! Carol” was a Top 10 hit, popular enough to generate an answer record — King’s husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote “Oh! Neil,” which failed to be a hit for King.

With many of rock ’n’ roll’s initial stars waylaid — Elvis Presley was in the Army, Chuck Berry was embroiled in legal problems, Little Richard left the music behind for church, Jerry Lee Lewis’ career imploded — Sedaka stepped into the breach, offering well-scrubbed, buoyant tunes designed to mirror teenage concerns. “Stairway to Heaven,” “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and “Next Door to an Angel” all bounced to a bright beat and boasted ornate arrangements that highlighted Sedaka’s youthful cheer.

While he was ensconced in the Top 10, Sedaka continued to write hits for other artists, remaining a regular composer for Francis but also reaching the charts with Jimmy Clanton. He’d occasionally moonlight in the studio too: He plays piano on “Dream Lover,” one of Bobby Darin‘s biggest hits.

By the time the Beatles and the British Invasion took over teen bedrooms and the pop charts in 1964, Sedaka’s hit-making streak had run dry. Panicked, he recorded “It Hurts to Be in Love,” an operatic pop song co-written by Greenfield and Helen Miller. Rushing into a nearby demo studio, Sedaka cut a version that was ready for radio, but RCA refused to release it, on the grounds that it only released records made in its studios. Gene Pitney took the track, subbed his vocals for Sedaka’s and wound up with a Top 10 hit at a time Sedaka couldn’t break the Top 40. Sedaka later claimed, “It was horrible. That would have been my No. 1 song, my comeback song.”

After his deal with RCA expired in 1966, Sedaka started playing hotels in the Catskills and clubs on the East Coast, venues that grew progressively smaller with each passing year. He continued to get work as a songwriter, penning songs for the Monkees (“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “When Love Comes Knockin’ at Your Door”) with lyricist Carole Bayer, and the 5th Dimension (“Workin’ on a Groovy Thing”) with Roger Atkins.

Faced with dwindling prospects in the United States, Sedaka began to regularly tour England and Australia in the late 1960s. By the dawn of the ’70s, he realized that the times had changed around him: “The era of the singer-songwriter had begun and I was being left behind. I needed to be part of it. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted it with a vengeance!” He returned to RCA with “Emergence,” a mellow record designed to follow King’s “Tapestry” onto the radio, but that airplay never materialized: Sedaka was still seen as a relic of the early ’60s.

Frustrated with the disinterest in “Emergence,” Sedaka decamped to the U.K., working its club circuit until he was introduced to Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley, a group of British pop veterans who soon would form the art-pop outfit 10cc. The quartet brought Sedaka into their Strawberry Studios — a place where they recorded a number of bizarre bubble-gum hits under such pseudonyms as Crazy Elephant and Hotlegs — and backed him on 1972’s “Solitaire” album, whose title track was his first collaboration with lyricist Phil Cody; it’d later be covered by Elvis Presley.

“Solitaire” gave Sedaka his first U.K. hit in nearly a decade with “That’s When the Music Takes Me.” Encouraged, the singer-songwriter reunited with 10cc in 1973 for “The Tra-La-La Days are Over,” an album that featured the bubbly “Love Will Keep Us Together.” By the time Sedaka released “Laughter in the Rain” in 1974, he had severed ties with 10cc and found a new benefactor in Elton John.

Then at the height of his phenomenal 1970s popularity, John signed Sedaka to his recently launched American imprint Rocket Records. Rocket repackaged highlights from the 10cc records as “Sedaka’s Back,” adding “Laughter in the Rain” for good measure. The lush number slowly worked its way up the charts, eventually reaching No. 1 on Billboard in 1975. “Bad Blood,” a lively duet with an uncredited Elton John, followed “Laughter in the Rain” to the top of the pop charts later in ’75, arriving just after Captain & Tennille had a No. 1 with “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

Sedaka’s comeback cooled as quickly as it had ignited. He reached the lower rungs of the Top 40 a couple of times in 1976, parted ways with Rocket, then signed to Elektra in 1977, releasing a series of records that found him countering his satiny easy listening with a louche streak on such songs as “Sleazy Love,” “One Night Stand” and “Junkie for Your Love.”

“Should’ve Never Let You Go,” a duet with his daughter, Dara, became his last charting hit in 1980. He published a memoir, “Laughter in the Rain: My Own Story,” in 1982 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983. By the mid-’80s, he had drifted toward the oldies circuit, revisiting his hits in the studio and onstage, turning his songbook into stage productions: The jukebox musical “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” arrived in 2005, and the musical biography “Laughter in the Rain” followed five years later. He returned to classical music for 1995’s “Classically Sedaka.” He recorded a collection of Yiddish songs, “Brighton Beach Memories,” in 2003, and a children’s album, “Waking Up Is Hard to Do,” in 2009.

Occasionally, Sedaka would reemerge on a bigger stage. In 2003, he showed up as a guest judge on the second season of “American Idol,” declaring its runner-up Clay Aiken was “ear delicious.” “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?,” a bubble-gum song Sedaka wrote and Tony Christie recorded in 1971, was revived in 2006, when it was used as the basis for the novelty “(Is This the Way to) The World Cup?”

On Oct. 26, 2007, Lincoln Center honored Sedaka’s 50 years in showbiz with a gala concert featuring Natalie Cole, David Foster and Clay Aiken. He continued to work steadily over the next two decades, releasing a handful of new records but focusing on concerts. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he took his show online, holding mini-concerts on social media.

Sedaka is survived by his wife, Leba, daughter Dara and son Marc, and three grandchildren.

Movie Reviews

‘Avedon’ Review: Ron Howard’s Admiring Profile of Groundbreaking Photographer Richard Avedon Embraces His Genius, Flair and Mystery

Published

10 hours ago

May 17, 2026

Press Room

For Richard Avedon, as with most significant artists, work and life were inseparable. When the photographer died in 2004, at 81, he was on the road, mid-project — “with his boots on,” in the words of Lauren Hutton, one of the many beautiful people he helped to immortalize over a 60-year career. Hutton and the two dozen or so other interviewees in Ron Howard’s admiring documentary make it clear how much affection the New York native inspired while reinventing fashion photography and putting his iconoclastic stamp on fine-art portraiture.

The profile Avedon paints is that of a relentless seeker and high-flying achiever, and a deliciously unapologetic contrarian. How can you not adore an image-maker who says, “Beautiful lighting I always find offensive,” and, regarding little kids as potential photographic subjects: “I find them intensely boring.” Avedon’s interest in the grown-up human face, in what it conceals and reveals, was his lifelong project, one that he pursued within circles of rarefied fame, on the backroads of the American West, and in a poignant late-in-life connection with his father.

Avedon

The Bottom Line

A solid mix of glitz and angst.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)
Director: Ron Howard

1 hour 44 minutes

As confrontational as his images could be, the camera was Avedon’s way of experiencing the world, a way of seeking truth through invention. Howard, whose previous doc subjects include Jim Henson and Luciano Pavarotti, and whose fiction movies are designed more to engage rather than to confront, seems particularly inspired here by Avedon’s auteur approach to still photography — it was a narrative impulse, not a documentary one, that shaped his vision, a drive to create moments and mise-en-scènes for the camera.

Avedon built his career at magazines in an era when magazines mattered. He was only 21 when he joined Harper’s Bazaar, where he stayed for 20 years, leaving to follow fashion editor Diana Vreeland to Vogue, where he stayed even longer. And when Tina Brown took the helm at The New Yorker and overturned its age-old no-photos policy, she hired Avedon as its first staff photographer.

When Harper’s sent him to Paris in 1947 with an edict to summon some of the battered capital’s prewar glamour, he turned to movies for inspiration and conjured visions of romantic fantasy amid the ruins. It was his first significant assignment, and a turning point for fashion photography. The doc emphasizes how, at a Dior show, the images he captured of the designer’s voluminous skirts mid-twirl expressed an ecstatic moment after years of wartime rationing. “People were weeping,” recalls Avedon, a vivid presence in the doc thanks to a strong selection of archival material.

The kinetic energy of those shots would become a defining element of his approach. Injecting movement and a theatrical edge into fashion photography, he lifted it out of the era of posed mannequins. To get models into the spirit of his concepts, he often leapt and danced alongside them. It’s no wonder that in Funny Face, the romantic musical loosely inspired by his career and first marriage, Fred Astaire played the photographer. Eventually Avedon shifted to a large-format camera, an 8×10, that allowed him to interact with his subjects directly, rather than through a viewfinder. There would be more scripted and carefully choreographed moments in his TV spots for Calvin Klein jeans and Obsession, collaborations with the writer Doon Arbus (daughter of Diane and Allan Arbus) that took chances (and which, for some viewers, are inseparable from memorable spoofs on SNL).

Fashion and advertising were mainstays, but he also became a notable portraitist. Positioning his subjects against a plain white background, he removed flattery from the equation. It was an artist-subject relationship in which he held all the power, and he didn’t pretend otherwise; on that point, Brown offers a trenchant anecdote. Remarkably, even though his refusal to sugarcoat was well established — not least by his notorious photo of the Daughters of the American Revolution — an Avedon portrait carried such cachet that establishment figures including the Reagans, Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush all submitted themselves to his crosshairs.

The film suggests that a moral imperative was as essential to Avedon’s work as his unconventional aesthetic vocabulary. He threatened to sever his contract with Harper’s when the magazine didn’t want to publish his photos of China Machado, and he prevailed: In 1959, she became the first model of color to appear in the editorial pages of a major American fashion magazine. Howard looks beyond the catwalks and salons to Avedon’s portraits of wartime Saigon, Civil Rights leaders and patients at Bellevue, many of those images collected in Nothing Personal, the book he did with James Baldwin, a friend from high school. A superb clip from a D.A. Pennebaker short of the book launch encapsulates the painfully awkward disconnect between the artist and the corporate media contingent. Most surprising, though, is how hard Avedon took it when the book was lambasted by critics. A later book, In the American West, would also meet harsh criticism; Avedon was, in the eyes of some, a condescending elitist.

Howard’s film is a celebration of a complicated man. It acknowledges Avedon’s naysayers, as well as his struggles and doubts, but this is very much an official story, made in association with the Richard Avedon Foundation, and steering clear of the disputed 2017 biography by Avedon’s business partner. The commentary, whether from models (Hutton, Isabella Rossellini, Twiggy Lawson, Penelope Tree, Beverly Johnson) or writers (Adam Gopnik, John Lahr, Hilton Als) or Avedon’s son, John, can be gushing, but it’s always perceptive.

The connection he sought with his subjects wasn’t about star worship but the instant when the ego lets down its guard, yet at the same time he was more interested in what he called “the marriage of the imagination and the reality” than straight documentation. Without putting too fine a point on it, Avedon links those twinned yet seemingly contradictory impulses to certain formative experiences. There was the devastation of extreme mental illness for Avedon’s sister and his second wife. There was the pretense of happiness in his childhood home in Depression-era New York (the city is captured in terrifically evocative clips). He recalls, discerning and exasperated, the staged domestic harmony — “the borrowed dogs!” — in family photos.

Avedon doesn’t aim to unsettle, like Avedon himself did, but neither does it tie things up neatly. There’s nothing simple or reductive about the emotional throughlines the documentary traces. It embraces the complexities of a man who turned artifice into a kind of superpower, whether he was dreaming up scenarios for fashion spreads or confronting an America as far removed from haute couture Manhattan as you could get.

Entertainment

How Hollywood’s production crisis became a key issue in the L.A. mayor’s race

Published

11 hours ago

May 17, 2026

Press Room

How Hollywood’s production crisis became a key issue in the L.A. mayor’s race

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who serves the 4th District, makes her way across an empty, unnamed backlot, presenting her case to be the city’s next mayor.

“Studio lots like this one used to be filled with people, costumers, electricians, set medics, caterers, thousands of Angelenos making a living,” she says in the video posted on social media. “Now these lots are quiet. Since 2018, shooting days in the city have fallen by half.”

After telling voters this issue is “personal” (her husband is a TV writer and producer), criticizing Mayor Karen Bass’ leadership on the matter and outlining her own plans, Raman proclaims, “I’m running for mayor to make sure Los Angeles stays the film and TV capital of the world.”

Placing the concerns of the entertainment industry at the center of the city’s mayoral race would have been unthinkable even in the last election cycle. But the production crisis, which has rocked Hollywood and pummeled its workforce, has reached a critical juncture. The state of L.A.’s signature industry is now a political flashpoint alongside affordability, crime and homelessness in the upcoming election.

A person films an interaction between mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt and another person on his cellphone during a “Community Meet and Greet” event out of a house for sale on Long Ridge Avenue in a residential neighborhood of Sherman Oaks on Saturday.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.

For decades, elected officials have not had to focus on the film and TV business, let alone turn it into a campaign issue. It was simply a given that local production would continue to play a dominant role in the city’s economy as it has for more than a century.

But the cumulative effects of consolidation, runaway production to tax-friendly states and countries and the end of the streaming boom has caused Los Angeles to lose billions in economic activity, shed some 57,000 jobs over the last four years and led to the closing of more than 80 film and television production service businesses across the city since 2022.

“For us, ‘save Hollywood’ is more than a slogan and more than headline. It is what needs to be done,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, one of the co-founders of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles.

To be sure, the biggest driver of where studios and producers film are state and federal tax credits, over which the city has no control.

But Buzick Kim and others argue that “there is lots the mayor can do, hand-in-hand with the City Council.”

Mayor Karen Bass walks with Nilza Serrano during Avance's politics and tacos event

For starters, say filmmakers and advocates, much can be done to tackle the city’s sclerotic bureaucracy, onerous regulations and a slow and costly permitting process that has pushed filmmakers to flee to friendlier and cheaper locales.

While steps have been put in place recently, including a pilot program offering reduced-cost filming permits for shoots that demonstrate a “low impact” to the surrounding community, many complain such steps have come too little and too late.

“The industry is in collapse and people have been talking about fixing things for years, but all we get are incremental little changes,” said Ed Lippman, a location manager of 34 years who lives in Sherman Oaks and has worked on such shows as “ER” and “The X-Files” and movies including “Galaxy Quest.” “And if the city is not being business-friendly, the business will go elsewhere.”

Compounding the problem, the Los Angeles area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own set of rules and regulations regarding filming.

“There needs to be universal standards,” said Travis Beck, a location manager for commercials, small films and music videos. “Burbank is different from Glendale, which is different from Pasadena.”

The recent kerfuffle over filming “Baywatch,” the lifeguard reboot at Venice Beach, underscored both the efforts to bring production back to L.A. — enticed by a $21-million tax credit — and the complex, baffling red tape required to film here.

When shooting began in March, the production encountered a number of hiccups, including that it needed nearly double the parking space it had received a permit for, which was not part of the original approvals.

An anonymous crew member claimed on Facebook that government restrictions had forced production to relocate from Venice Beach. Production staff denied they had relocated. However, the incident prompted a backlash, becoming a rallying cry over L.A.’s burdensome filming bureaucracy.

The “Baywatch” team quickly met with city and county officials and resolved the issue, securing an agreement for a 20% parking discount from the city, and the mayoral candidates used it as an opportunity to score political points.

Pratt slammed the city’s permitting problems.

“LA turned its back on Hollywood — now the golden goose needs CPR,” he wrote on his Substack.

Bass highlighted her administration’s leadership on the matter.

“The City of Los Angeles will always clear bureaucratic barriers, making it easier and more affordable to film in the entertainment capital of the world,” she wrote on X last month.

On April 21, the mayor unveiled programs to offer productions 20% discounts on city-owned parking lots and other equipment, reduced filming fees at places like the Griffith Observatory and reopened the Central Library for filming. Last August, she appointed Steve Kang, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, as the city’s film liaison.

Raman has pledged her support for expanding the state’s $750-million tax incentive program, streamlining permitting and lowering fees and eliminating those for small productions. She has also said she will establish a dedicated city film office with a liaison who understands production.

Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd outdoors behind Nithya for Mayor chalk message on ground

“Los Angeles is losing Hollywood,” Raman said in a statement. “Not because productions want to leave, but because we’ve made it too hard for them to stay.”

On his Substack and various podcast interviews, Pratt has promised to slash location fees in half, speed up permit approvals, reduce on-set city staff for the majority of productions and waive all fees for shoots with budgets under $2 million.

All three candidates have attacked one another over their approach to Hollywood.

Pratt and Raman have said Bass moved too slowly to address spiraling production and retain film jobs, saying she enacted measures only recently as the mayoral race was heating up.

Speaking on the Monks & Merrill podcast, Pratt criticized Bass’ moves to cut costs to film at the Griffith Observatory, saying, “Who needs that shot right now with the homeless poop all around it?”

The incumbent mayor has defended her administration’s record with the entertainment industry.

Bass and Pratt have taken Raman to task, calling her out for what they say is her lack of advocacy during her time on the City Council.

“She feels very strongly about it. But never offered one motion on the industry, and when motions came up on the industry she either recused herself, or got up and walked out,” said Bass during a debate this month.

Citing a potential conflict of interest over her husband’s work in television, Raman refrained from voting on several motions related to Hollywood.

Many working in the industry would like to see full-throttled support coming from the mayor’s office that will get results. They note how New York City has successfully promoted itself as a leading film destination over the years. (Kang, the city’s chief film liaison, said the city is working on a similar marketing campaign to promote filming that will launch by early fall.)

“For all the talk about, ‘We need to support and bring back filming,’ if they just did basics like lowering the fees and simplifying the process … that would actually help people and get things produced,” said Chris Fuentes, 66, who worked for 30 years as a location manager until he retired last year.

“We’ve heard a lot of great things, but not all things are possible in the mayor’s remit,” said Buzick Kim, noting that tax incentives are a state and federal issue.

Still, she said, “the mayor must understand that Hollywood needs to be made a priority and to find and create inspired thinking to make things easier and cheaper.”

Kang agrees, but says there are limits to what the mayor can achieve.

“We definitely can do a lot to really open up the entertainment industry, but at the same time, we recognize the larger impact needs to come from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., because L.A. just does not have the resources to compete with other jurisdictions in providing millions of dollars in tax incentives,” he said.

For most working in the industry, they just want city leadership that will execute on more than just talking points.

“This is the birthplace of cinema,” Beck said. “It shouldn’t be so hard to film here.”

Movie Reviews

‘Hokum’ movie review: Damian McCarthy’s nasty little ghost story is undone by its own explanations

Published

22 hours ago

May 17, 2026

Press Room

‘Hokum’ movie review: Damian McCarthy’s nasty little ghost story is undone by its own explanations

A stil from ‘Hokum’
| Photo Credit: NEON

For those of you already familiar with Damian McCarthy’s work, the Irish filmmaker has spent the past few years turning cramped Irish spaces into elaborate, nerve-racking machines for dread. His 2020 debut, Caveat, trapped us inside a decaying rural house with a chained protagonist and a grotesque toy rabbit, while 2024’s Oddity transformed an isolated farmhouse into a relay system for jump scares built from negative space and the sound of somebody knocking at the wrong moment. His latest, Hokum, pushes that approach into a larger setting without sacrificing the intimate unpleasantness that makes his work so effective.

The film takes place almost entirely inside the Bilberry Woods Hotel, a fading property buried in the Irish countryside where the final few guests arrive for a Halloween celebration. At the same time, staff members quietly prepare to shut the building down for winter. Into this atmosphere walks Ohm Bauman, played by Adam Scott, an American novelist carrying two urns containing his parents’ ashes and a personality abrasive enough to make even the resident ghouls feel hospitable.

Hokum (English)

Director: Damian McCarthy

Cast: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O’Connell, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio

Runtime: 107 minutes

Storyline: When novelist Ohm Bauman retreats to a remote inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, he’s consumed by tales of a witch that haunts the honeymoon suite

McCarthy introduces Ohm through his work. The opening sequence shows him writing the conclusion to a historical adventure novel about a conquistador stranded in the desert with a dying child, and the scene initially appears disconnected from the main story until the camera pulls back to reveal that the entire episode exists inside Ohm’s manuscript.

This intro establishes the emotional logic driving the film. Ohm writes stories where people wander toward death because he has spent most of his adult life emotionally entombed inside the loss of his parents, who died shortly after honeymooning at the same Irish hotel he now visits. McCarthy avoids turning this into a tidy psychological diagnosis and attempts to reveal the damage through behaviour — Ohm humiliates a bellhop named Alby by heating a spoon over an open flame and pressing it against the young man’s hand after Alby asks him to read an aspiring manuscript.

That ugliness becomes central to Scott’s performance. Hokum strips away the comic cushioning that often softens his cynicism, especially in his recent Severance escapades. Scott keeps Ohm emotionally rigid even as the character begins to unravel inside the hotel’s sealed honeymoon suite, and the refusal to chase sympathy lends the film a sourness that works in its favour. When Ohm eventually risks himself to search for the hotel bartender Fiona, the motivation grows from guilt and loneliness over his botched suicide attempt. Fiona disappears after warning him about the suite’s resident witch, a local legend the hotel staff accepts with weary practicality, and her absence pushes Ohm deeper into the building’s sinister secrets.

A stil from ‘Hokum’
| Photo Credit:
NEON

Cinematographer Colm Hogan lights the hotel with weak lamps, muddy greens, and heavy shadows that preserve spatial clarity even when characters crawl through near-total darkness. Production designer Til Frohlich fills the honeymoon suite with damp wallpaper, antique furniture, and cramped architectural dead ends that make it feel physically hostile before anything malicious even appears. McCarthy then uses sound with vicious precision, as ringing bells ring, creaking floorboards, and a mutated, uncanny-valley children’s TV program begin flooding the ominous silence.

The film loses some momentum once McCarthy begins unpacking the mystery behind Fiona’s disappearance and the crimes attached to the hotel’s past. Several supporting characters remain thinly drawn, particularly the hotel management, and the screenplay occasionally mistakes withholding information for complexity. The final stretch also leans too heavily on explanatory reveals and heightened confrontations, with the climactic encounter involving the witch pushing the film toward bluntness when the earlier sections had earned their power through suggestion alone.

Even so, Hokum succeeds because McCarthy understands the mechanical pleasures of horror filmmaking at a level many contemporary prestige directors seem embarrassed by. Though the scares land with diminishing returns this time, McCarthy still stages them with the acute understanding of just how long we will stare into a dark hallway before resenting ourselves for it. His folklore imagery still carries the grubby charm of an R.L. Stine paperback pulled from a damp school library shelf, which gives the film a pulpy nastiness that suits it well. McCarthy never fully organises many of these elements into a clean mythology. What he does create is a horror film with texture and personality, even if it barely holds up against the mastery of its predecessors.

Hokum is currently running in theatres