A mental patient knocks at the front door of a remote estate in the dead of night, requesting entry because he claims that, moments before, he spotted an intruder enter the home. Such a scenario faces Dani (Carolyn Bracken) in the opening scene of Irish writer-director Damian McCarthy’s sophomore horror film, Oddity. We don’t see what happens next, at least not right away, but considering that the following scene involves Dani’s widower, psychiatrist Dr. Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee), paying a visit to her blind twin sister, Darcy (also Bracken), nearly a year after Dani’s grisly murder, we can assume she chose poorly.
Twins are often portrayed as having a creepy connection in film, even more so in horror, and that holds true with Oddity. What’s more, while Darcy may not have use of her eyes, she has a kind of second sight that allows her to see the histories of previous owners of the objects she touches. This extrasensory skill comes in handy at the occult antique store she runs, where she warns customers that shoplifting from this particular blind woman is futile because only upon sale does she lift the curses placed on her merchandise. She sells items like a haunted call bell that purportedly summons a spectral bellhop who has murdered the previous two people to ring it. But she’s especially interested in the glass eye of her sister’s suspected murderer (Tadhg Murphy), who was brutally killed in his cell.
During Ted’s brief stop in at Darcy’s shop, he lets slip that he’s got a new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton), and Darcy is able to divine more details of what happened to her sister by handling the dead mental patient’s glass eye, which Ted has brought for her, prompting her to unexpectedly visit the site of Dani’s murder on the anniversary of her death, the home now occupied by Ted and Yana. Moreover, she’s preceded at Ted’s home by the arrival of a large crate containing a shocking gift, a grotesque, life-sized wooden mannequin with its faced locked in a snarling scream. Ted heads off to his night shift at the psych ward and Yana finds herself stranded with the uninvited Darcy and the even less welcome wooden guest, who somehow makes his way out the box and to the head of the table. Yana navigates a curious line of questioning from Darcy followed by a series of unsettling events. And then there are the various strange totems stowed away in holes atop the golem’s head.
The elements are here for a hokey misfire, but guided by McCarthy steady hand, Oddity succeeds largely in maintaining a smoldering sense of dread, fueled by ominous sound design, atmospheric lighting and unnerving imagery. McCarthy’s sets add to the film’s sense of simmering menace, as Ted’s old, stately home adds a gothic feel to the film’s sense of place, with the only other settings consisting of Darcy’s antique shop filled with haunted relics and the grim, clinically cold psych ward where Ted works. McCarthy is impeccably deliberate with his camera, staging chilling shots by simply turning the golem’s head or showcasing the interplay of light and shadow. The occult trappings certainly add to the film’s dread-drenched aesthetic, but it’s the compelling and unnerving performances (particularly Bracken as the eerie Darcy), a slowly unspooling mystery and deft direction that make Oddity one of year’s most uncanny horror curios.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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