Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews
Matthew M. Bartlett

Oddity

Writer/Director – Damian McCarthy

A man with a glass eye appears at the window of the as-yet unfurnished country home in which Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is staying the night prior to the completion of renovations. He demands to be let in, saying that he’d seen a man sneak in through a door left open. The man reveals that he’s a former—or escaped?—patient of her husband, who is a doctor for the criminally insane. She hesitates. Is he to be believed? Are those creaking sounds coming from upstairs?

We cut to Ted (Gwilym Lee), Dani’s husband, entering a shop of oddities, run by Darcy, Dani’s twin (Bracken again, in a skillfully essayed dual role), who is blind and claims to be able to read objects. Ted has with him the glass eye of the man who’d pleaded with Dani to be let in, though he is skeptical of Darcy’s proclaimed gift, thinking her to be mentally ill.

We learn that a year has passed, and that Dani was murdered that night—presumably by the man at the door –but possibly, of course, by the intruder that man claimed to have seen.

Not long after, a large box arrives at the country house, now inhabited by Ted and his new girlfriend Yana, who it is suggested may have had some involvement with Ted prior to his wife’s murder. The box contains a life-sized humanoid figure carved from wood, its features demonic, its mouth open in a silent scream. Darcy arrives not long after, presenting the wooden figure as a gift (which is received with curious and not entirely plausible equanimity, I have to say) and makes herself at home just as Ted is leaving for work and Yana for her apartment. But Yana can’t find her keys, and must now (very reluctantly) pass the night with the unnerving Darcy and her even-more-unnerving wooden companion—which seems to move here and there of its own accord.

Not the surreal spooky oddity of a movie the title suggests, Oddity is instead a well-plotted Hitchcockian murder mystery, with over-the top touches, such as he insane asylum, in which inmates roam, each displaying his own special manic tics, twin sisters with a psychic connection, ghosts who shout dire warnings, a creepy orderly, a cruelly deployed trap-door…even a bell purported to summon the murderous ghost of a bellboy.

The engine of the movie is the question of who killed Dani and to what end? Was it the man with the glass eye? Another inmate? Her sister is determined to find out and to exact revenge, presumably with the assistance of that strange wooden figure, whose head, incidentally, has an array of holes in the top, each holding an item—well, best to see that part yourself.

The conclusion, which takes place there in that isolated country home, seems inevitable, and yet involves a surprising callback—I can’t decide whether the decision on the part of the writer-director was brilliant or unintentionally absurd, though it certainly was audacious.

Oddity is, overall, a hypnotic, suspenseful murder mystery with a healthy dose of the supernatural. It might have been more effective had it reined in its more lurid aspects, but it certainly wouldn’t have been quite as much fun.