Why one chilling 'Hokum' scene made Adam Scott 'audibly yelp'

We're discussing light spoilers for the movie “Hokum” (in theaters now), so beware if you want to go in completely cold.

For Adam Scott, there’s nothing like watching his new supernatural horror film “Hokum” with a crowd of people screaming and having a great time. And he even cops to the frights working on him, too.

“It’s profoundly scary,” the “Severance” actor says. “And it really sneaks up on you in a really fun way.”

Directed by Damian McCarthy (“Oddity”), “Hokum” stars Scott as prickly author Ohm Bauman, who ventures to Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes near a remote hotel where they honeymooned. He’s told of a witch that haunts the honeymoon suite, which is cordoned off from guests.

Ohm immediately calls it “hokum,” but when a hotel employee (Florence Ordesh) who did him a kindness goes missing, he becomes determined to find out what happened to her while also facing the ghosts of his own past.

Ohm faces plenty of freaky sights and sounds, from dead bodies and claustrophobic dumbwaiters to a creepy kids show that will give you the willies. But in real life “when you're making the thing, it's not necessarily scary because you're on a soundstage and everybody's safe,” Scott says.

His most spine-tingling moment came later, when doing a post-production recording session with McCarthy. In a scene where Ohm is walking across the honeymoon suite, McCarthy needed Scott to record his breathing. As they were recording, Ohm goes through a doorway and suddenly the ghost of his dead mother appears walking behind him, which “made me audibly yelp out loud and jump,” Scott recalls. “And (McCarthy's) just sort of like, ‘Oh. OK. Well, that's an interesting choice, but all I need is just like breathing sounds.'

“The fact that something that I'm in really terrified me there for a second, and completely caught me off guard, really says something.”

Known mainly as a comedic actor, Scott has dabbled in horror throughout his career – one of his earliest movie roles was actually in 1996’s “Hellraiser: Bloodline.” “It wasn't because I was a ‘Hellraiser’ fan,” he says. “It was because it was a job that I got. I don't think I had seen a ‘Hellraiser’ movie.”

When it comes to his own horror taste, the ones Scott says he connects to the most are “great movies first and great horror movies second,” stuff like John Carpenter's “The Thing,” “Hereditary,” “The Shining” and “An American Werewolf in London.”

“All these movies have these great character-driven stories that would stand on their own, whether or not they are horror,” he says.