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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Boy Eats Girl (2005)

As lovely as she may be, it's weird to think that there was a time in which Samantha Mumba was being sold as some kind of worthy addition to a movie cast. I cannot even recall her musical hit(s), but I recall never thinking of her as being poised for a career in acting. But a small filmography proves me wrong. The quality of the movies there, well, that's a different matter entirely.

Boy Eats Girl isn't terrible. It's just a bit confused. Which is what you might expect from a zombie film that is also hitting all of the beats for a standard teen flick. It's still better than Warm Bodies, but that's not saying much.

Mumba plays Jessica, a young woman who has an admirer in the shape of Nathan (David Leon). But Nathan doesn't want to make a move, for fear of ruining their friendship. Despite the encouragement from his other mates, Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan). Much like so many other teen movies, you get a school bully (Samson, played by Mark Huberman), a gorgeous "rival" (Cheryl, played by Sara James), and a mother (played by Deirder O'Kane) who panics when she finds out that her son has accidentally suicided himself and tries to fix it with a book of mumbo jumbo sorcery that starts a zombie epidemic. That last part may not feature in many teen movies, but it's in this one.

There aren't many other titles in the filmography of director Stephen Bradley or writer Derek Landy that stand out. You might say that Boy Eats Girl is the biggest thing they've done, in terms of the cast involved and the exposure it had when first released. Which makes it easy to see why they've never really clawed themselves up to some higher level. There's enough here to make it a fairly enjoyable enough 80 minutes, as long as you're not too demanding or hard to please, but there's not enough here to make it stand out in any way. The comedy falls a bit flat, the zombie carnage is very tame, and the third act just leads to everything ending with a whimper, rather than a bang. What works, surprisingly, is the mix of characters. They may be a bundle of stereotypes, but they're all given enough individual moments to help them be more memorable than they otherwise would be, and the cast provide varying results.

Leon isn't a bad male lead - imagine if Andrew Lincoln made his debut as a strung-out goth - and Mumba is pretty and sweet enough to make the central potential pairing worthwhile. James, Huberman, O'Kane, and the likes of Bryan Murray and Lalor Roddy all do well in their supporting roles, but the main chuckles come from Murphy and Kinlan, the sidekicks who are willing to help their mate when able to break through their fear-induced paralysis.

A lot of people will absolutely hate this. It uses zombies in a way that zombie movie fans will dislike, it tries to coast along on a mix of small-time charm and youthful energy. But it almost works. Almost. It might have done a bit better if it didn't also feel designed to give Mumba a push that never really felt earned (as much as I don't actively dislike her).

4/10

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