Oddity opens with Dani (Carolyn Bracken) alone in an old converted stable house in the middle of the countryside. The rough, unfinished home conversion is stark, empty, and eerily beautiful. We watch Dani as she goes about her jobs, fixing the place up, before settling in to spend the night alone inside the old building, a small tent prepared in one of the rooms. Her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), is working nights in a nearby high security mental hospital, so Dani is alone as the darkness creeps in. Or is she? After heading out to her car she has a knock at the door, where she finds a former patient of her husband, Olin (Tadgh Murphy), begging to be let in, warning her that someone is in the house with her.
After this the film jumps forward a year, where we learn that Dani was brutally murdered within the house, and that it's believed Olin committed the crime after being allowed inside. Her blind twin sister, Darcy (also played by Bracken) runs an occult antique shop, where she contains haunted and cursed items. She's visited by Ted, who brings her the gift of Olin's artificial eye, the former patient having been recently killed. Darcy believes that she can use her psychic gifts to learn something from the eye, something that Ted dismisses out of hand. However, when Darcy arrives on Ted's doorstep a few days later, with a mysterious crate, he and his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton) are ill prepared for what will come next.
Labelled as a horror, Oddity certainly fits the bill thanks to its eery atmosphere and some truly chilling frights, but for me the film is much closer to a dark, supernatural thriller; one that works its way under your skin as you demand answers to the mystery of what happened to Dani. This question is at the heart of the movie, and is one that informs everything that we see. This mystery would be enough to sustain the film in itself, and there are thousands of stories about someone investigating the death of a loved one, but what makes Oddity feel different from a lot of these is the way that the supernatural manages to creep its way into every moment in the film.
The very first scenes of the movie feel like an urban legend, one of those stories that's designed to scare you around the campfire. Imagine you're alone in a big, dark house, and someone at the door is telling you that someone else got inside with you. Would you believe that? Could you take the risk of opening the door? The initial setup gets under your skin so beautifully that even though it's the most grounded and 'normal' part of the film it still feels like something that's so impossibly frightening that it could only exist in fiction, even if because it's a scenario that's so nightmarish. But from this moment on dread, unease, and the supernatural seeps into every moment.
From the first introduction of Darcy we see that she's deep into the world of the paranormal, with her tiny antique shop filled with items with dark stories and supposed curses attached to them. It's something that most people would dismiss out of hand, something so outlandish that it would have to be fake, but the film presents it in such an honest way that you believe it. Even without the paranormal having been brought up before this point you leave the scene convinced that ghost exist, and that we'll be seeing more of them.
It's once we return to the scene of Dani's murder that things really ratchet up, and we'll be spending much of the film in this one location. The stark grey walls and minimal colours in the scenes, matched with Darcy's pale clothing and light hair makes it feel like a lot of the life has been drained out of things. The atmosphere of the building itself feels wrong, dark and cold even in moments where it shouldn't be, and despite the beauty of the location you can't help but feel unease just in being there. The cinematography and choice of shots adds to this, as characters are often framed with darkened doorways behind them, pools of shadow where you keep finding your eyes drawn, waiting for something to emerge and frighten you.
Oddity uses atmosphere to sell the horror and unease of the story, are rarely if ever resorts to cheap jump scares of musical stings to make the audience jump. There are some moments that will make you yell out loud, frights that feel sudden that you can't help but be caught off guard, but they're done in such a way that they feel well earned, rather than tricks that are being used upon you.
A lot of praise should also be given to the cast, who do a superb job with the script. Bracken does double duty as both sisters, and is so good in each role that I didn't even realise she was both characters until another pointed out that Darcy looked exactly like Dani. Dani seems confident, full or energy and life in her scenes, whilst Darcy is quiet, withdrawn, and incredibly still. They physical differences in how Bracken plays the two is so good that I bought they were different people. Some of this comes down to Darcy's blindness, the fact that she has to move through a scene differently, that her movements seem more calculated and thought out and she takes on an almost ethereal quality at times.
Gwilym Lee's Ted is presented as a hard to read character, which is great for the mystery angle of the film. He could be seen as a man struggling with the grief of his wife having been killed, or he might be someone who simply doesn't care that she's dead. He's very reserved, almost detached in his scenes, and you're never quite sure whether you should trust him or not. The flip side to this is his new girlfriend, played wonderfully by Menton. Yana comes across as very unlikable to begin with, resenting that Darcy is in her home, and not wanting to be around her, but as the film goes on you start to see her differently, and she's perhaps closer to the audience surrogate than you'd first expect as a regular person dropped into an extraordinary series of events. It's interesting to see how your views of her change across the course of the film, and in the end I felt her to be one of the most relatable characters in the movie.
Although there are some predictable moments in the film, frights that you can see coming a few minutes before they hit, the film is very much its own animal. Writer and director Damian McCarthy has crafted a story that feels twisting and complex, changing tone and going to some incredibly dark places without it losing its sense of self. It's a film that's unpredictable, yet once it's all said and done there's never a moment that felt wrong or out of place. McCarthy has taken the supernatural mystery genre and managed to craft something new and interesting from it, delivering a film that demands to be seen more than once.
The blu-ray release offers those without a Shudder subscription a chance to watch Oddity, which I would say is reason enough to pick up a copy if it's your only way to watch the film. Sadly, there's not a huge amount on offer on the disc outside of the film. There's a three minute scene that shows the storyboards alongside the action, a four minute featurette that talks to some of the cast and crew, and a photo gallery that shows how the wooden mannequin was created. I would have loved more behind the scenes stuff, and something like a director commentary to really get deep into the film would have been great, as I feel Oddity is the kind of film that demands in depth analysis.
Oddity is a great movie, one that I can't help but think about after it's done. A brilliant example of how to create a compelling, engaging horror film almost completely set in one location with a limited cast, effects, and budget. This is the kind of movie that people who want to make films should be watching, as there's a lot that can be learned from this.
Oddity is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital from 6th January 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment