Oddity begins with an not possible alternative. A girl alone in a distant nation home hears a knock on the door. There, an odd man with panic in his stare declares she should let him in. He claims to have seen somebody sneak into her dwelling, and tells her she will not be secure. She would not have her telephone along with her. And was the creak upstairs an intruder? Or simply an previous home settling? Dare she keep inside with an unknown menace? Or go outdoors with a raveled stranger whose presence is as alarming as his look? 

Author/director Damian McCarthy hooks viewers from the beginning with this scary state of affairs. However then he takes a radical flip. As an alternative of following this poor girl named Dani (Carolyn Bracken) by an evening of terror and menace, he leaps to a full 12 months later, the place her sister Darcy (additionally performed by Bracken), a blind medium who owns an oddity store, is looking for to grasp precisely what did go down that horrible evening. (Spoiler: It was nothing good.) 

This nonchalant temporal leap pitches viewers off-balance, like when a curler coaster abruptly tilts to the aspect, exact and perturbing. As he did together with his stellar function directorial debut, 2021’s Caveat, McCarthy would not play by the cliched guidelines of horror. So, a slasher setup spins right into a story of ghosts, witchcraft, a homicide investigation, and grim vengeance. Atmospheric and unpredictable, Oddity is a uncommon treasure. 

What’s Oddity about? 

The primary thrust of the plot follows Darcy as she intrudes on the renovated dwelling of her sister and the renovated lifetime of Dani’s uptight widower, Ted (Gwilym Lee), and his new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton). On the one-year anniversary of Dani’s dying, Darcy pays an sudden go to and brings an uncommon household heirloom. As in Caveat, a creepy handmade determine performs a central function in McCarthy’s haunted home story. There, it was a festering rabbit toy that banged cymbals. (Eagle-eyed viewers may spot it on show in Darcy’s store!) In Oddity, the creepy craft is a full-sized man, carved out of wooden, his mouth agape in a silent scream.

Understandably, Ted is not eager to maintain this eerie factor round. However he is bought work on the asylum to get again to, so he awkwardly excuses himself, leaving his flustered girlfriend dwelling alone with Darcy and her demented bauble. It isn’t lengthy earlier than unnerving issues start to occur round the home. Is Dani’s ghost haunting the place? Is Darcy toying with this surviving couple out of a twisted sense of retribution for thus swiftly transferring on? Is the wood man actually transferring on his personal? As magic and psychological sickness play part of the story, something is feasible, which is exactly what makes Oddity so thrilling. 

Damian McCarthy builds an increasing horror universe with Oddity. 

Nods to Caveat apart, the stranger on the door is called Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy), a fellow with a prosthetic eye and a tragic backstory that was unfurled in McCarthy’s brief movie “How Olin Misplaced His Eye.” Past a crossover of props and characters that will not be explicitly sure, McCarthy is brewing a model of horror that is mind-bending, menacing, and so putrid with decay you possibly can virtually odor the rot. Like poor Dani, the hero of Caveat (performed by Jonathan French, who additionally pops up in Oddity) was additionally put in a curious place on the movie’s begin: a job supply that may appear weird, however is desperately wanted. So what’s a set of shackles between paychecks? 

In Oddity, somewhat than a home in ruins, Dani’s house is a historic previous dwelling being rigorously renovated. A collision of coarse stone partitions and trendy work pinned upon them exhibits not solely the distinction of previous and new, but additionally the previous of Dani colliding with the current of Yana, her youthful, smirking substitute. McCarthy well accentuates this dynamic in his use of coloration. Cool tones just like the blue-grey stone or Yana’s shiny navy shirt current a world of seeming civility, entitlement, and order. However splashes of stark purple blood or the brilliant yellow of the pup tent during which Dani as soon as slept stand out, driving dwelling the dissonance of random acts of violence on this supposedly cheap world. There’s an class amid this eeriness, even within the design of the wood golem, plugged up with bobs of blood, hair, and household photographs. He’s directly beautiful and horrific; clearly static, but so lifelike that when Yana irreverently pokes her hand into his open mouth, your physique could effectively rattle with the anticipatory worry of a gnarly chew!

Each twisted flip is easily made, thanks not solely to McCarthy’s talent in honing tone, but additionally courtesy of an ensemble solid that delivers performances grounded but edged with depth. Pulling double obligation, Bracken gracefully switches from the easy-breezy Dani to the doubtful Darcy, her physicality rising tighter as her broad smile tightens to sharp grin. Lee brings surly irritation because the widower, taking part in Ted like a pretentious schoolmaster bored with lecturing kids that there aren’t any monsters underneath their beds. Murphy and French fold in layers of worry and panic in small however pivotal roles, whereas Menton delivers a classy snottiness that makes her a pointy foil to the scheming Darcy. All in all, it is a solid of characters at every others’ throats, and totally mesmerizing. 

Oddity is a savage unique.

Extremely, McCarthy weaves in components of many horror genres. The distant setting and ghostly potentialities lean into haunted home territory. However Darcy’s wood man was made by a witch (so she says), skewing the plot into darkish magic. Dani’s sequence, with its isolation, intrusion, and bloody consequence, performs out like a slasher. Then, the central battle between the could-be newlyweds and Darcy strums on the core of folks horror, during which educated metropolis people come to a rural village and sneer at believers (Darcy) and superstition to their detriment. But Oddity doesn’t really feel like a pastiche. As an alternative, McCarthy takes every of those components and makes use of them as a hue in his distinctive palette of horror. He blends them fantastically and harrowingly, pulling us in with their mystique and making us howl with their darkest revelations. 

Watching Oddity, I briefly fearful there is not any means the film may preserve this ferocious momentum. It isn’t that the movie is frantically paced, extra that it strides. When McCarthy units up a well-known beat, he is aware of you already know what’s going to come subsequent. A girl alone in a giant, spooky home will likely be attacked. A sister-in-law discouraged from dropping by completely will at a most inopportune time. And by transferring to those beats so rapidly, McCarthy leaves us no room to breathe or anticipate the place the story will swerve subsequent.

Different filmmakers may need us slog by a trilogy for all of the story he weaves into one 98-minute movie. Quickly, the main target will not be a lot about who killed Dani, however how Darcy’s quest for understanding will play out for anybody remotely concerned. And the ending — I am elated to report — is as sick as it’s satisfying. Not simply due to how this plot unravels, but additionally due to how McCarthy, after racing us round timelines and subgenres, takes his time to ship a ultimate beat that brings a significant blow. 

In a phrase, Oddity is superior. 

Oddity was reviewed out of its premiere at SXSW 2024.