ODDITY
(director/writer: Damian McCarthy; cinematographer: Colm Hogan; editor: Brian Philip Davis; music: Richard G. Mitchell; cast: Gwilym Lee (Ted Timmis), Carolyn Bracken (Darcy/Dani), Tadhg Murphy (Olin Boole), Caroline Menton (Yana), Jonathan French (Declan Barrett), Steve Wall (Ivan); Runtime: 98; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Laura Tunstall, Katie Holly, Evan Horan, Mette-Marie Kongsved; Shudder, IFC Films; 2024-Ireland)
“Will end on an eerie note.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy (“Caveat”) is the writer/director of this well-crafted, slow-burn, creepy, supernatural thriller. It revolves around a murder mystery that’s set almost entirely in a haunted house-like country setting, in Ireland.
The blind psychic Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), an antique store owner of cursed objects (oddities), is the identical twin sister of Dani (Carolyn Bracken), who was brutally murdered a year ago. Darcy schemes to catch the real killer through magic realism by bringing a scary looking cursed life-sized wooden male mannequin from her store (once owned by her parents) to Ted (Gwilym Lee), her sister’s former hubby, in his crime-scene home, because she suspects him of being the real killer.
The murder was blamed on an escaped mental patient from a half-way house, one of the psychiatrist Ted’s former asylum patients (Tadhg Murphy). He was the glass-eyed stranger who knocked on Dani’s door to warn her that an intruder was in her house, but she ignored the warning.
Darcy believes they got the wrong killer, who was himself mysteriously murdered in the asylum when he returned there.
Darcy thereby pays a surprise home visit to Ted and his new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton), a pharmaceutical sales rep he met at work, and gifts him the scary-looking mannequin he doesn’t want but keeps.
Yana is scared of being alone in the crime-scene house when Ted works at night, and sleeps at those times in the city. When Ted goes to work, she’s about to drive to the city but can’t find her car keys. Darcy then decides to keep her company at night.
During the third act things fall into place with the visit from a ghost.
The low-budget, unambitious, indie horror pic, will end on an eerie note, with a blank dark screen allowing for a twisty and tense imaginative finale.
It played at the SXSW.
REVIEWED ON 7/21/2024 GRADE: B