The Reel Review
On the one-year anniversary of the mysterious murder of her twin sister, a blind psychic medium brings a creepy, life-sized, wooden mannequin to the ancient stone house in the Irish countryside where the crime occurred, to find out who actually killed her sister. Carolyn Bracken and Gwilym Lee star in this Irish mystery/horror.
Writer/director Damian Mc Carthy (Caveat) knows how to patiently build a sense of dread in this clever, slow burn horror that plays out like a campfire ghost story, gradually revealing its key plot points like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Our psychic, it turns out, has the ability to see the past through objects once owned by the dead, and her disturbing looking mannequin plays a key role in getting her to the truth… and just maybe, revenge.
Bracken (The Quiet Girl, You Are Not My Mother) is the standout as the two very different but psychically connected twin sisters, with Lee (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the dead sister’s husband, a doctor at an insane asylum who has already moved on with a vapid new girlfriend who doesn’t like the idea of sleeping in the house where her predecessor was killed. The story at times moves slowly and requires full attention so as to pick up key plot points. But the setting, creating just the right amount of creepiness, and a clever twist ending, make Oddity a rarity – a horror film that is actually sticks the landing.
REEL FACTS
• One of the items in Darcy’s curio shop of haunted objects is the rabbit doll from writer/director Damian Mc Carthy’s 2020 debut film, Caveat.
• Jonathan French, who plays Declan Barrett in Oddity, was the star of Caveat.
• Just like Caveat, Oddity was filmed at Bantry House in County Cork, Ireland.
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