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Oddity begins with a delicious horror conundrum. Alone in her newly purchased country house while her psychiatrist husband Ted (Gwylim Lee) works an overnight shift nearby, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) runs out into the dark to retrieve something from her car. When she hears a strange noise, she rushes back into the house and locks the door.
The sounds from outside intensify, prompting Dani to open a slot on the door, revealing a shocking sight: a haggard and intense man, staring at her with one glowing glass eye. The man begs Dani to let him in, a request she denies until he comes to the point. The man claims that he someone else is inside her house. He pleads with her to open the door before it’s too late. Despite his intimidating appearance, the man seems sincere and kind. What should Dani do?
It’s no spoiler to say that the evening ends with Dani death, as most of the film picks up a year later. However, this opening dilemma captures everything compelling and frustrating about Oddity. The sophomore feature from Irish filmmaker Damian Mc Carthy, Oddity stacks horror concept atop of horror concept, leaving viewers unsure of what kind of movie they’re watching. Is it about a madman with a glass eye? Is it about a masked killer that Dani psychic twin sister Darcy (both women played by Bracken) sees in her visions? Is it about Dani’s ghost haunting the house? Is it about cursed objects? Is it about the freakin’ terrifying life-size wooden puppet that Darcy brings into the house and everyone just accepts? To Mc Carthy’s credit, all of these disparate threads do come together in a coherent narrative.
Oddity focuses mostly on a single night, one year after Dani’s death. Dani’s blind twin Darcy arrives unannounced at the house that Ted now shares with his girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Although she claims to want to spend the anniversary mourning her sister with Ted, Darcy in fact seeks to uncover the truth about Dani’s demise.
Oddity runs into its biggest problems when it tries to make sense of the setup. One can accept that Ted would allow his former sister-in-law to come by the house and insist on staying overnight, even though he and Yana both have intentions to leave for the evening. Yana rightly protests to her boyfriend’s acceptance of the intrusion and responds to Darcy with reasonable chilliness after she finds herself stuck in the house, alone with the woman.
However, nothing explains why Yana and Ted accept Darcy’s gift of a life-size wooden mannequin, complete with an angry, open maw. In theory, the mannequin operates like Hitchcock’s famous bomb under the table, something we viewers understand as a threat but the characters do not recognize, thus building tension. Instead viewers cannot help but chuckle every time the camera catches sight of a monstrosity sitting at the dinner table like a polite guest. It’s in these moments that Mc Carthy’s attempt to blend horror subgenres becomes a problem. We’ve all seen killer doll movies and can accept standard genre beats in the absence of recognizable human behavior. But when ghosts and psychics and slashers are also in play, viewers cannot help but wonder why Yana and Ted don’t burn the demon puppet immediately.
The fact that these questions don’t overwhelm the film is a testament to the excellent work done in Oddity, both behind the camera and in front of it.
Bracken excels in dual roles, making two sisters feel distinct (Dani, warm and welcoming; Darcy, cold and rigid) without ever slipping into caricature. She plays Darcy’s sorrow with a crease of the forehead and a clipped last word, neither overdoing the sorrow nor hiding it. Ted could easily be a cruel husband character, but Lee makes him into a real human, a selfish man who considers himself kind and understanding. Conversely, Tadhg Murphy puts so much empathy into his madman character, the one who begged Dani to let him inside, that the viewers immediately share Darcy’s skepticism about the events of that evening.
The characters interact in wonderfully unique spaces, a credit to production designer Lauren Kelly and her team. Every frame is full of detail, especially Darcy’s shop full of oddities, but they never overwhelms the viewer, a credit to Mc Carthy’s skills as a director. He and director of photography Colm Hogan show a real gift for blocking and composition, placing each person in the perfect position to create dread, even when nothing is actually happening. The digital photography does, at time result in a flat images, but that can be forgiven in an independent feature. Mc Carthy and his team use their spaces and sounds so well that we’re too frightened and engrossed to care too much about visual shortcomings.
Mc Carthy constructs each of his horror set-pieces with the confidence of someone who understands the power of the genre. In every instance, whether its the sudden appearance of a ghost or the creeping dread of a wooden man, Mc Carthy wrings terror from the scenario. He succeeds despite the mismatch of subgeneres, making Oddity an oddity of a film indeed.
Oddity releases in theaters on July 19, 2024. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.
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