Millennials and Gen Z already know the central message of Damian McCarthy’s new Irish horror film, Oddity. We feel it in our bones and understand it on a cellular level. It’s an innate, primordial instinct designed to keep us safe, like fight or flight, or the sensation of hunger: Anyone who drops over to your house without texting first is a psychopath.
McCarthy’s 2020 directorial debut Caveat held a creeping sense of dread and a fascination with potentially supernatural objects. It’s a similar situation in Oddity - a paranormal horror set in the Irish countryside.
Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in a large stone house, which lays empty while being renovated. A late-night knock at the door reveals a man with a glass eye issuing warnings that someone else is in the home, leaving her unsure whether the greatest danger lies inside or outside.
Fast forward to a year later and it’s revealed that Dani was killed that night, with her twin sister Darcy (also played by Bracken) unconvinced by the official explanation. Darcy is blind, but has a gift for ‘reading’ objects; a skill she puts to use in her job running a curio shop. Dani’s widower Ted (Gwilym Lee) brings Darcy the glass eye of the man who knocked on the door that night, and she becomes determined to bring it to the old house to try and sense what happened the night her sister died. Ted on the other hand, isn’t so keen. He and his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton) now live in the house, and they doesn’t want Darcy sniffing around.
But Darcy won’t be ignored, Ted.
Whilst it certainly deals in eeriness and creep, Oddity’s true wit comes from its understanding of another form of terror: social etiquette and the horror of an unwanted houseguest. This is where McCarthy’s sharp humour seeps into the picture, lending the film an unexpected and welcome playfulness.
Darcy arrives at what is now Ted and Yana’s house and acts like she thought she was invited. It's a clear manipulation tactic, one that is painfully - and hilariously - impossible to call out. The unwritten rules of Irish hosting mean visitors must always be welcomed, fed, and never turfed out into the cold, no matter how inappropriate their intrusion may be. Their gifts must also be accepted with profuse thanks, even when it’s is a life-sized screaming wooden man (which is most definitely cursed). Ted succumbs to the pressure but Yana resists, bringing the laughs by throwing hugely indignant glares and scowls at her partner, Darcy and the giant screaming wood sculpture, even though Ted is the only one who can actually see her…Right?
When Yana is left alone with Darcy the social etiquette begins to crumble. Darcy throws out not-so-veiled accusations of Yana being the other woman to her sister and Yana’s patience for the unwanted houseguest rapidly diminishes. But as the night goes on with the ancient woodman’s mouth gaping in a silent scream, the dangers of the house transcend the realm of social faux pas, entering the realms of the undead, vengeful, and violent.
The marketing for Oddity puts a lot of focus on this terrifying wooden man - an unnerving creation of award-winning Irish artist and film sculpture specialist Paul McDonnell. Like a wooden embodiment of Munch’s ‘The Scream’, it’s seemingly stuck in a moment of pain and torment, and it feels almost inevitable that it'll come to life at some point to complete its howl. McCarthy plays with this this uneasy sense of anticipation. Each time Yana leaves or enters a room, we expect the wooden man to have moved, creating a heightened state of unease. This understanding of patience and pacing is McCarthy’s strength, with the final shot in particular highlighting his ability to layer clues and hold them back until a precisely perfect moment.
That being said, there's much more going on away from this eerie figure. Playing with our suspicion of characters, the film introduces some well-known horror tropes only to wink at them, mixing up jolts of brutality with jokes. Lee is a natural as the woefully hangdog Ted, with some sharp glances and moments of steeliness keep us guessing. Bracken is superb, bringing such tight control to Darcy that it seems inevitable that she, like the wooden man, might have to break.
McCarthy’s sense of space is effective, playing with the complicated layout of the house, the surrounding isolation and Ted’s workplace to create a consistent sense of claustrophobia. We’re made well aware that there’s nowhere to run and that nobody's coming to help.
The story itself is predictable at times, and many of the twists could be easily telegraphed early on. McCarthy gets the last laugh with the final scene though, and the film's atmosphere and performances make it well worth a watch. With summer just about over, Oddity is a fitting way to welcome the start of spooky season.
In horror cinema, haunted objects are a familiar trope: There’s the 1958 Plymouth Fury of Stephen King’s “Christine,” Lemarchand's puzzle box in Clive Barker’s 1987 film “Hellraiser,” and the cursed video tape of 1998 Japanese supernatural psychological horror film “Ringu” and the subsequent American remake “The Ring.” How many haunted dolls can you name? Standouts are Chucky from “Child’s Play,” the vintage porcelain doll from “Annabelle,” and all the malevolent creations of puppeteer André Toulon featured in the “Puppet Master” series.
In the new Irish horror film “Oddity,” a central character is a collector of cursed and haunted objects. The film, directed by Damian McCarthy, features a fascinatingly surreal and creepy atmosphere, strategically placed scares and rising tension that sometimes approaches Hitchcockian levels of execution. “Oddity” is an ingenious fusion of haunted house dynamics, brooding monster vengeance, and classic whodunit. Although the psychological and emotional motivations that compel each character may sometimes feel questionable, the overall tone and stylish approach to storytelling make “Oddity” a wicked delight.
The setting is a remote country house. While renovating the residence, Dani (Carolyn Bracken), wife of psychiatrist Ted (Gwilym Lee), is brutally murdered. Investigators charge Olin Boole, a patient from the hospital, with the homicide. Sometime later, Boole, too, is found dead.
One year after her death, Ted, who works the night shift at a local mental health institution, is still living at the house, along with his new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton). He delivers one of Boole’s personal possessions to Dani’s blind twin sister Darcy (also Bracken). Darcy is a self-proclaimed psychic and collector of cursed items. Using psychometry, she realizes that Boole may not have been responsible for her sister’s death.
Convinced that something is amiss, Darcy arrives at the country house, hoping to unravel the truth. Just before she arrives, Ted and Yana receive a crate containing a life-sized wooden mannequin — a tool Darcy plans to use in her quest for justice.
McCarthy manages to take what seems like a fairly predictable tale and fill it with unexpected moments as well as visual and emotional jolts that truly connect with the viewer. Bracken’s performance — in both roles — is striking and polished. As Darcy, she is restrained and solemn, burdened by both the stigma of her psychic powers and by a secret and oppressive shame. McCarthy’s script beautifully develops these characters with an economy of painterly marks, allowing the viewer to infer deportment and purpose through impressions.
For fans of quiet, subtle horror, this film covers all the bases, often emphasizing fear of the unknown through lingering shots of deep, unsettling shadows and almost imperceptible terrors — like transient ghosts sweeping through one’s peripheral vision.
“My goal with ‘Oddity’ was to make a film that is unpredictable and hard to classify in the numerous subgenres of Horror,” McCarthy wrote in his director’s statement. “It’s a revenge movie. It’s a haunted house movie. It’s a monster movie. It’s a thriller and a whodunit. ‘Oddity’ is my way of bringing all of these subgenres that I love together in one unique story that I hope encourages repeat viewings.”
With “Oddity,” the director has crafted an eerie, otherworldly milieu populated by complex characters and dripping with tension and unnerving dread.
