JP Nunez
Oddity has been on my most-anticipated list ever since I first got wind of it. It was made by Damian McCarthy, the guy who burst onto the horror scene with the 2020 gem Caveat, and if you’ve seen that film, you know it’s one of the best and most inventive creepfests in recent memory. I couldn’t wait to see how McCarthy would follow up that fantastic debut, so when I finally got the chance to review Oddity, I jumped on it right away. I requested a screener as soon as I could, and now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed.
Oddity was written and directed by Damian McCarthy, and it stars Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Jonathan French, and Steve Wall. In the film, a woman named Dani is brutally murdered at a remote house she and her husband are renovating, and about a year after this woman’s tragic death, her twin sister, Darcy, is dead set on finding out what really happened… and getting revenge.
See, Darcy is a medium and the owner of an odd antique shop, so she has recourse to methods the police could never dream of. One day, she goes back to the house where her sister was killed, and with the help of a wooden mannequin she inherited from her mother, she uses her psychic abilities to execute some otherworldly justice.
When Oddity begins, it sets itself up as a bit of a mystery. In the first few minutes of the movie, Dani finds herself alone in her house, and a mysterious man comes knocking on her door. He says he saw someone slip inside when she wasn’t looking, and he wants to protect her against this potentially dangerous intruder.
Of course, Dani doesn’t believe him, but the guy is so insistent she just doesn’t know what to do. Her uncertainty makes this scene an absolute masterclass in tension and suspense, and writer/director Damian McCarthy manages to make you just as unsure of the truth as Dani. Your indecision will eat you up and make you want to rip your hair out as you try to decide what this poor woman should do, but the film cuts away before you find out what happens to her.
The only thing you know is that she’s dead, and the implication seems to be that the rest of Oddity is going to focus on the mystery of who killed her. But surprisingly, it doesn’t. From there, the plot kind of just meanders along with almost no sense of urgency, so you’ll soon come to realize that, much like Caveat, Oddity isn’t actually about the story.
Instead, the whole thing is simply an excuse to show off Damian McCarthy’s genre chops, and he totally knocks it out of the park. Seriously, this movie is a feast of horror goodness, so nearly every scene has the potential to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. McCarthy excels at using sound and creepy visuals to create an unrelenting atmosphere of dread and uncertainty, and he even throws in a handful of startlingly effective jump scares every now and then.
In particular, there are two scenes that really stood out to me. For starters, one of these jump scares just might be an all-timer. I’m obviously not going to spoil it, but I will say that the scare involves Dani and a small enclosure, and it takes place during a scene that’s already incredibly tense. What’s more, the thing that jumps out at you is terrifying in itself, so this is about as far from cheap as you can get. It’ll genuinely scare you while it makes you jump, and that combination is pretty tough to beat.
Secondly, there’s a scene where Darcy is alone with the wooden mannequin and her brother-in-law-’s new girlfriend, Yana, but she’s fallen asleep. So naturally, Yana wants to check the mannequin out, and at one point she moves her hand towards the thing to touch its mouth. Now, on paper that sounds pretty innocuous, but this woman is clearly scared of the mannequin, and Damian McCarthy uses her fear to craft one of the most intense scenes in the entire film. Even though you know this thing is an inanimate object, Yana’s trepidation is contagious, so you’ll be on the edge of your seat the entire time as her hand slowly inches closer and closer to it.
All that being said, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. While Oddity focuses way more on scares than story, it’s not entirely devoid of interesting plot developments. Again much like Caveat, this movie adds a couple of twists and turns to keep you on your toes, but even then, don’t expect Hitchcockian levels of narrative mastery.
They make the plot just interesting enough to hold your attention, but they’re not going to win the film any screenplay Oscars. And to be frank, they’re not supposed to. These twists come early enough in Oddity that they feel more like normal plot developments than Shyamalan-esque bombs, and you’ll most likely be able to guess the biggest one well before it’s revealed.
That unremarkableness proves once again that the story here is secondary to the scares, so don’t go into Oddity expecting Shakespeare. This movie is a 98-minute creepfest, and if you want it to be anything else, you’re going to be disappointed. But if you accept the film for what it is, Damian McCarthy will take you on an amazing ride with some awesome scares, and you’re almost guaranteed to have a great time.
Oddity is set to hit theaters on July 19.
