Main cast: Gwilym Lee (Ted Timmis), Carolyn Bracken (Dani Timmins, Darcy Odello), Tadhg Murphy (Olin Boole), Caroline Menton (Yana), Jonathan French (Declan Barrett), and Steve Wall (Ivan)
Director: Damian McCarthy
Oddity has a large spooky house, a creepy mannequin, and a psychic. Had this been some Blumhouse Productions affair, it would be a tedious and grating jump scare-a-minute nonsense, but fortunately, director and screenwriter Damian McCarthy has tad more good taste and sensibility than the average Blumhouse goon.
This one opens with poor Dani Timmins, alone in the house as her psychiatrist husband Ted is working at the nearby loony bin, getting spooked and eventually murdered. Ted’s most recent patient, the recently released Olin Boole, is convicted of the murder, and then poor Olin is later found murdered in his psychiatric ward shortly after. I’m sure all these events are coincidental!
One year later, Ted is getting cozy with his new girlfriend Yana, when their idyllic is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Darcy, Dani’s twin sister. Darcy runs a shop selling woo-woo curiosities, and she brings with him a life-sized, truly ugly and creepy mannequin whom she claims will help her discover the identity of Dani’s killer.
That’s right, she doesn’t believe that Olin is the killer, and as she tells Yana later, she has the gift of psychomancy. She can touch someone’s personal item and deduces that person’s most intimate secrets. Somehow, she has managed to use her gift to find out that Olin is innocent, and now she wants to get to the bottom of her sister’s murder once and for a while, no matter what it takes.
It’s pretty common for horror filmmakers to subvert tropes and what not these days, perhaps because most horror fans have seen everything and are harder to catch off guard, but this one manages to do that without sacrificing scares, and that’s an impressive feat in the current climate of the horror genre.
This movie is genuinely creepy. The pacing never lets up as, even when things may not be happening fast and while, the calm but menacing atmosphere never falters. Together with the effective horror movie lighting—not too dark, not too bright, just enough of both to create a Gothic horror atmosphere—and unsettling set pieces, the movie continues to give off this “Everything looks a little normal but at the same time a little wrong… creepy!” tension that keeps me at the edge of my seat, waiting for the jump scare to hit me.
To my pleasant surprise, this movie doesn’t do that obnoxious increasingly loud music, idiot walking slow motion in a super dark hallway, BAAAM HERE’S THE JUMP SCARE JUST BEHIND THE IDIOT BANG BANG SOUND nonsense. No, while the scare does arrive, the payoff is very satisfying because it’s well-earned after all that satisfying buildup and all.
The identity of Dani’s killer is obvious—seriously, who else can it be?—but the movie manages to retain my attention because of this.
True, at the end of the day, the simple story leaves a few loose ends that require the audience to join between the dots and make some assumptions to fill in the blanks, but that’s nothing wrong with this at all. It’s a well-acted, well-thought, and very entertaining scary big house movie that manages to both subvert and meet my expectations. Everything just works here.
