'Oddity' Conjures an Eerie Ghost Story Complimented by One Creepy Mannequin [Review]

​Riddled with gripping atmospherics and uncomfortable tension, writer/director Damian Mc Carthy’s Oddity boxes the audience into a night of revenge that creeps and crawls its way to a terrifying conclusion. Though it stumbles here and there with a plot that doesn’t always feel as smooth as freshly sanded wood, well-crafted scares and loads of chilling imagery more than make up for a few nicks and scratches.
 
One year after the murder of his wife, Ted (Gwilym Lee) delivers the fake eye of the now deceased man/ex-patient believed to have killed her to the woman’s twin sister, Darcy (Carolyn Bracken). A reader by trade—someone who can see the past through personal belongings—the spiritual woman believes there may be more to her sibling’s death than has been let on. Ted and his new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton) are surprised when Darcy arrives unannounced at their cottage in the middle of nowhere. But she isn’t alone. She’s brought with her an old wooden mannequin, a gift passed down from her mother said to have been given by a witch. What she plans to do with it will be revealed over one long, stormy night in which secrets come to the forefront and the past returns with a furious vengeance.
 
Mc Carthy’s Caveat scared the hell out of me. And with Oddity, the filmmaker proves he’s a goddamn wizard at conjuring terror that carves itself into your mind like a teenager leaving his initials on the bark of an oak tree. We’re dropped into an old cottage home, isolated and dark and writhing with a modern gothic vibe. Bristling tension fills the space and never lets up once Darcy arrives. Neither Ted nor Yana want her there—or her wooden friend—but she is what you would call the insistent type. In fact, she’s downright unnerving thanks to a standout dual performance from Bracken, playing two sisters with different personalities and ensuring each makes their mark. To enhance the sense of something terrible encroaching upon the characters, Mc Carthy and cinematographer Colm Hogan frame nearly every shot to feel claustrophobic. This is a story about how our beliefs (or lack thereof) box us in. Whether by a lust for revenge or a dismissal of the supernatural, the characters all find their world closing in around them, visualized by Hogan’s vice-like framing. 

Of course, it’s the wooden man designed by Paul McDonnell that steals the show. Reminiscent of the mannequin from The Fear with the eeriness of PIN’s medical dummy, the mere presence of the thing is enough to put viewers on edge. We see it on the faces of Ted and Yana, unnerved by the screaming visage of Darcy’s “gift” to them that she has so casually sat at one end of the table like a nightmarish dinner guest. I could feel my own heart scream during one drawn-out moment that has Yana tempting fate by reaching her fingers into the thing’s mouth. The filmmaker employs the expected scares of catching it somehow in different places and positions, but it always works thanks to cringe-inducing features only its witchy mother could love. Also working in Mc Carthy’s favor is a vague approach to the wooden man. We don’t really know what he is, what he does or why Darcy has brought him. Answers remain a little too unclear by the end, which will certainly frustrate a few of you, but often it’s what we don’t understand that scares us the most. And it isn’t just the wooden man playing creepy tricks on the characters and the audience. This is ultimately a ghost story, one that delivers ghoulish spirits—done with practical makeup—that will haunt you long past the closing credits.
 
Scary as it can be, Oddity still has a few termites eating through its structure. For one, the mystery laid out by Mc Carthy will be deciphered by genre aficionados in mere minutes. The filmmaker does his best to draw our attention away from the obvious with a red herring or two, but that does little to keep the fog over the story from lifting. Meanwhile, character motivations often come off as clunky and nonsensical. Not ideal when the plot hinges on absurd motives that even the explainer at hand has trouble clarifying. Most disappointing of all though is a revenge premise that leaves the audience starving. They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but Oddity has a habit of sticking chilled morsels in our mouth, only to withdraw it at the last second. Mc Carthy does reward audience patience with an eerie burn that culminates into outright horror, though with a little too much teasing to leave us fully satisfied.
 
Third act stumbles aside, Mc Carthy proves once again he is a horror filmmaker to be reckoned with. Like an extended episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, Oddity may not be all that successful as a revenge tale, but as a ghost story, it does more than enough to leave you afraid to crawl into bed with the lights off.

Oddity arrives in theaters July 19th from IFC Films. 

By Matt Konopka