Oddity, 2024.
Directed by Damian McCarthy.
Starring Carolyn Bracken, Jonathan French, Steve Wall, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton.
SYNOPSIS:
A blind medium uses haunted items to uncover the truth about her twin sister’s murder.
Damian McCarthy’s previous movie Caveat, was a slow-burning mood piece that had a few pacing and script issues, but it did highlight that the filmmaker was creative in setting a tone and making his scares effective, which is something he has brought to his follow-up movie Oddity, albeit with a few of those previous flaws ironed out.
The plot to Oddity feels like an episode of Hammer House of Horror or Tales of the Unexpected in that a blind medium who also runs a shop full of allegedly haunted objects – you see? – is seeking the truth of who murdered her sister. Said medium is Darcy Odello (Carolyn Bracken) and her sister Dani (also played by Bracken, but in a wig) was married to Ted Timmins (Gwilym Lee), the head doctor at an asylum for the criminally insane – of course – and during the first act we do get to see how Dani was killed, but not by whom, although it is most likely it was an escaped patient from Ted’s hospital because he was at the Timmins’ secluded country house the night of the murder.
But things are not so obvious to Darcy, who comes to visit Ted and his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton), bringing with her a creaky old trunk that contains a wooden mannequin with a pained expression of its face. Darcy clearly has a plan to figure out what happened to her sister and, if truth be told, the movie doesn’t do a great job of keeping the mystery going until the end, and anybody familiar with any TV murder mystery series will have it figured out long before any of the characters on the screen do.
And that lack of characters doing or saying anything sensible or realistic is Oddity’s biggest downfall, as Darcy, Ted and Yana – as the main characters – are very one-dimensional, extremely unlikeable and not at all relatable. Add to that a couple of side characters who have about as much depth and development as the caretaker in a Scooby-Doo cartoon and you will soon put all the pieces together.
However, all is not lost as despite the characters all being cardboard cut-outs and the acting not much better, Oddity does ooze creeping dread and Damian McCarthy reveals his shocks with precision timing. There are a few jump scares but none of them are cheap ‘cat-jumping-out-of-a-cupboard’-type frights, instead the filmmaker framing and lighting each shot for maximum effect before enhancing the unnerving feeling with something to genuinely make you yelp. The main prop of the mannequin is also quite creepy, and although you know what is going to happen with it, as you will no doubt have seen that type of thing in many a creepy doll movie, it never gets to the point where you’re laughing at it or shaking your head in disbelief.
The other notable improvement from Caveat is how much more inventive the filmmakers are with the camerawork and how each scene is edited. The bulk of modern supernatural horror movies feel very flat and monotone to try and create a mood or atmosphere, and whilst McCarthy employed that style in his previous movie, Oddity feels a little fresher for having the camera move around a little more. For example, the scene where we get to see what happened to Dani is shot and edited in a deliberately choppy fashion that still doesn’t show you exactly what happened to her, but it gives you enough and adds a little bit of contemporary slasher movie styling against the haunting backdrop of a dark country house. Possibly not the most revolutionary thing, but it gives Oddity more of an identity rather than just playing out like a standard snail-paced mood piece.
Oddity is probably not a movie that you might want to return to on a regular basis, but it does point the way ahead for Damian McCarthy and showcase his talents for telling a story in an effective way. It is by no means perfect, but it is a huge step forward from Caveat in terms of style and pacing, and one gets the feeling that his masterpiece may not be too far away.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
