Oddity (2024)

directed by Damian McCarthy

Ireland

98 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I used to actually make an effort to try to keep up with new horror releases. The fact that I don't do that anymore is something I occasionally feel guilty about, but I've mostly accepted it now. If I ever feel like watching something new, I'll do it, and if it takes me two years to get around to watching a movie, as is the case with Oddity, well, it's not like the movie's going anywhere, I guess. (I will be discussing spoilers in this review and this is a movie you should definitely go into blind - preferably without even seeing a poster, but that's harder to avoid.)

One thing I was concerned about when I started watching the film is that it would stoop to demonizing mentally ill people as the source of its horror element, which is something I've always found extremely offensive in horror movies. I kind of figured Oddity had to have some kind of twist somewhere, because fortunately movies that do just straight up say "the killer was a scary insane guy who was so scary and insane, wooo, so scaaary, ooooh" with absolutely no depth or nuance seem to be getting fewer and fewer, but this movie really does seem like it's going in that direction for a while. Thankfully, though, it isn't, and save for one part at the end of the film that I felt was kind of unnecessary, the medical staff who work with mentally ill people are presented as much scarier than their patients.

So the thing about this movie is that it's a relatively normal supernatural murder mystery involving a character with extrasensory perception using her abilities to figure out that her sister's real murderer was not the man everyone believes did it and also what in the god damn hell is that thing. With a heaping helping of cold, dreary Irish weather and such traditionally creepy place-settings as a curiosity shoppe and a ramshackle old country house that's only partially renovated, Oddity presents us with plenty of atmosphere that would by itself make for a very good horror movie and also what in the god damn HELL is that thing. The real centerpiece of the movie is not the murder, it's not the sister with supernatural powers, it's not the canonically-established fact that ghosts and curses are all completely real within the universe of the film, it's whatever the god damn hell that thing is.

"That thing" is, of course, a large man carved out of wood that is, inexplicably, tied to the sister and is able to be controlled by her in some way. How she ended up with it is touched upon so briefly you might miss it. How exactly it works is never touched upon at all. It's present for virtually the entire movie, and when it's not onscreen you can actually kind of forget about it - like I said, there's so much else going on, with the murder, the psychic sister, the cursed objects, and an unholy asshole of a husband - but it's always there. The fact that we never learn what it is or why it is is crucial to basically the entire movie. It's just this deeply bizarre non-sequitur lurking at the edges of the picture. I wish more horror movies were so daring as to present you with an object that is vital to the plot and just not ever explain it.

And I LOVE the last shot of the movie. 98 minutes of what had been a tense, moody horror film gets capped off with basically a sight gag, and somehow it doesn't feel like tonal whiplash - or maybe it does, but it's perfectly-placed tonal whiplash. The husband thinks he's gotten away with three murders and is set for life, who cares about some silly blind girl who collects "cursed" items, what a crazy old bat, none of that could have been real, right? And the very last we see of him, he's two seconds away from getting the absolute living daylights scared out of him by an undead bellboy. If we can't see him brought fully to justice, then at least we can imagine him getting knocked down a peg or ten by the exact thing he so arrogantly assumed was not real.

Damian McCarthy previously directed Caveat, which I'll come right out and say is a much better film than this one, and is one of the rare horror movies to genuinely give me the willies. Oddity, compared to Caveat, is much more polished and seems like it probably had a higher budget, and despite still being a fundamentally weird movie, Oddity feels a little more rote, a little more mainstream. It'll be interesting to see how McCarthy follows this up, if or when he does; he seems pretty skilled at making horror movies that have something really strange at the center of them, and I hope that element of his films never gets ironed out for wider presentability.