Oddity (2024)

Writer-director Damian Mc Carthy made a very impressive impact on horror fans with his first feature, Caveat, and now, there's no reason for me to keep my cards close to my chest here, he is two for two. Oddity is arguably a slight improvement, although it's a very close call, and I will be very happy indeed if Mc Carthy continues to make movies of this quality, and with this level of creepiness.

Things begin with a tense sequence that ends in murder, the victim being Dani (Carolyn Bracken), the wife of a psychiatrist named Ted (Gwilym Lee). The main suspect appears to be a former patient of Ted, but there may be more to it. Anyway, we then jump forward to find Ted in a new relationship (with Yana, played by Caroline Menton) and apparently trying to maintain a cordial relationship with Dani's twin sister, Darcy (Caroline Bracken again). Darcy is blind, but also claims to be clairvoyant and able to glean knowledge from objects that have an interesting history to them. Darcy still seeks closure on what happened to her sister, disbelieving the official explanation, and she eventually turns up to visit Ted and Yana at the house where the murder happened. She's not alone though, having previously sent a strange wooden mannequin to the address ahead of her arrival. Will that humanoid structure help her in any way, or is it just designed to unnerve her hosts as she tries to get at the truth of what happened to her sister?

A fantastic mix of spookiness and intermittent jump scares (and there's nothing wrong with a jump scare if it is a well-executed jump scare), Oddity may put some viewers off with the way in which everything seems slightly off-kilter and precisely staged, but that all adds to the unease as the plot starts to wind together on the way to a satisfying and beautifully dark finale. Colm Hogan deserves praise for cinematography that keeps things dark and unsettling without ever being impenetrably gloomy, and the score by Richard G. Mitchell is another element that works to keep viewers on edge. Mc Carthy has made something that could have easily been focused more on the mystery than the horror of the situation, but he uses every tool at his disposal to ensure that this is a claustrophobic and disturbing nightmare scenario that closes in on viewers right up until the very last scene.

Bracken is excellent in her main role (she's also very good as the ill-fated Dani, but it's Darcy who has much more screentime, for obvious reasons), and the other highlight is Tadhg Murphy, used to such great effect in the opening sequence. Menton also does well, and is the one person who seems able to see how strange and crazy the whole situation is, but she's disappointingly moved out of the way during some key sequences. As for Lee and Steve Wall (playing a colleague named Ivan), there's a rigidity and artifice there that works better for the atmosphere of the film than it does for the performers. Those performances are based on the idea of maintaining a polite smile on your face while mentally calculating the quickest way to get rid of someone who is proving to be a constant bother. 

Absolutely in line with Caveat, in terms of atmosphere and visual style, this essentially plays out like a few "Tales Of The Unexpected" bolted together and smoothly shaped into one feature, and that's not meant as any kind of criticism. I loved it, and I hope many others love it, but I can see why some may find it too low-key and uneven in tone (considering those mannered performances, and the fact that there's very dark humour running under some of the bleakest scenes).

8/10

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