As ODDITY opens we find ourselves alone with Dani (Carolyn Bracken) in a draughty, isolated farmhouse somewhere in Ireland when she’s suddenly disturbed by a knock at her door. A stranger (Tadhg Murphy) demands that she let him in, for she is in danger from someone else who has got into the house. Should she trust this raving madman with one glass eye? He’s a patient of her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), a psychiatrist, who works nights and therefore is unable to come to the aid of his wife. And before we know it, Dani is dead. But who is responsible? Officially, it’s the madman, the improbably-named Olin Boole. But Dani’s twin sister Darcy, also played by Carolyn Bracken, isn’t convinced. Darcy is an odd sort; a blind mystic who runs an antique shop and has no social graces, showing up unannounced a year later at the same house where Dani died. Ted now lives there with his new girlfriend Yana, and neither are pleased to see Darcy. But she insists on staying the night, and not only that, but she’s brought an absurdly creepy life-sized wooden man, who sits quietly at the dining table as Yana (Caroline Menton), forced to cancel her plans, does her best to entertain Darcy as Tim heads off to work. The wooden man’s presence is so bizarre yet so unassuming that it’s easy to forget he’s even there until he shows up quietly, in the background or off-centre of a shot, lending a nightmarishly surreal quality to the already awkward, claustrophobic and plain unpleasant atmosphere.
There is much more yet to come as ODDITY‘s story plays out in fractured, unsettling, mildly anachronic order, but I’ve already written a lengthier plot summary than is customary for me and besides, I wouldn’t want to spoil any of the unlikely, uneasily compelling twists packed into the film’s short runtime. More shocking still are some of the jump scares contained herein; they are few, and tastefully executed, yet agonisingly frightening.
Damian McCarthy, on only his second feature now, is probably the best horror director currently working. His début, the dreadfully scary Caveat, and ODDITY have much in common, including minor rôles, cameos really, for Caveat‘s stars, Johnny French and a horrid cloth rabbit. Caveat probably stands as the better film for its more well-rounded storyline, but ODDITY is the work of a more accomplished director; the pacing and staging of his scares the work of an uncommon talent, a director with an instinctive mastery of the horror genre.
But both films are modern masterpieces, as wild, mysterious and fundamentally unwelcoming as their dark, damp Irish environs. There’s no joy in this world, in which all of his characters are fundamentally alone. They talk past each other; some of them are cruel to others; all are simply cold. Colder yet are the stone farmhouse settings of both films, whose chill atmosphere seems to creep out of the screen to settle itself under the viewer’s skin. These are films to be watched under several layers of jumpers and in darkness and hush.