Director: Damian McCarthy
Script: Damian McCarthy
Cast: Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Lee, Jonny French, Caroline Menton, Tadhg Murphy, Steve Wall
Running time: 98.5 minutes
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15

Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is murdered while she’s D.I.Y-ing alone in a rambling, isolated building that her and her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), are jointly renovating. At the time of her murder, her husband was working at the psychiatric hospital that he helps to run, as a senior doctor. Following the killing, Dani’s blind twin sister, Darcy (also played by Bracken), is out to find justice for her dearly departed twin, not believing in the police conviction of Olin, a young man with mental issues, who apparently escaped from the institute that Ted works at and then targeted and killed her sister.

However, Darcey is a psychic and runs an oddity shop, Odello’s Oddities, which is essentially a shop full of cursed items; so, no surprise that customers seem to be in short supply! When Olin is brutally murdered at the hospital, Darcey requests that Ted bring her his glass eye, which he, somewhat bemused, does. Little does he realise that one of her psychic skills is the ability to gain information from an object just by touching it. In this case she learns the identity of the true killer and that they’ve definitely got two working eyes.

Things finally come to a head when Darcey invites herself over to Ted’s fully renovated house, which he’s now sharing with his new girlfriend, Yana (played well by Caroline Menton). But Ted has to head off to the hospital for his night shift leaving Yana to face Darcey – along with her very weird house gift – alone. You just know that Darcey will have lots of uncomfortably searching questions for Yana…

Oddity is an excellent supernatural shocker which, fortunately for the viewer, is also a pretty original one. It’s a horror film that weaves together a more modern setting with the myths and folklore of old, including that of the legendary golem. In fact, writer/director McCarthy (Caveat) is clearly a fan of certain horror tropes, borrowed from the likes of Egyptian culture; alongside the more creepy machinations of writers such as M.R.James and Arthur Machen.

The acting is all high quality, although I felt that Steve Wall (who plays one of Ted’s orderlies) overacts a little in a couple of brief scenes involving one of the inmates. His acting wasn’t bad, far from it, but I just feel that sometimes ‘less can be more’. Meanwhile, Colm Hogan’s photography makes good use of the limited locations and budget, while Richard Mitchell’s score is full of understated menace.

Director Damian McCarthy also demonstrates that he has an excellent grasp of how to create tension and genuinely creep his audience out. For example, early on there’s a nice creepy sequence involving Dani looking through some photos on her camera, whilst she’s looking for signs of an intruder, and, in a later sequence, an already disturbing mannequin is made more disturbing still.

The nice thing about a film like Oddity is you don’t have to be a major horror fan to enjoy it – it’s a solid psychological whodunit thriller too, so its appeal is much wider than many horror films. I’m already looking forward to seeing what writer/director McCarthy dreams up for us next…

Horror channel, Shudder, have put together some decent special features, although it would have been nice to have had an audio commentary from the film’s writer/director and a trailer too.

Storyboard to screen featurette (3.18 mins) – A nicely presented sequence showing the storyboard for one of the more horrific scenes, set at the hospital, and how it compares with the final sequence, as shot.

Behind-the-scenes with cast and crew (4.40 mins) – An interesting featurette, which shares some nice behind-the-scenes footage with us, interspersed with some informative sound-bites from some of the cast and crew. I would have liked to have seen much more of this kind of material – this is more of an EPK.

Wooden mannequin gallery – 43 shots and stills of the man-sized wooden-featured mannequin, that’s featured throughout the movie. The behind-the-scenes shots are cool, seeing all the individual parts.

Oddity
Justin Richards reviews Damian McCarthy's 'Oddity', a Shudder original.
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About The Author

After a lengthy stint as a print journalist, Justin now works as a TV and film producer for Bazooka Bunny. He's always been interested in genre films and TV and has continued to work in that area in his new day-job. His written work has appeared in the darker recesses of the internet and in various niche publications, including ITNOW, The Darkside, Is it Uncut?, Impact and Deranged. When he’s not running around on set, or sat hunched over a sticky, crumb-laden keyboard, he’s paying good money to have people in pyjamas try and kick him repeatedly in the face.

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