ODDITY (2024)

Studio:   IFC Films/ Shudder
Director: Damian McCarthy
Writer:   Damian McCarthy
Producer: Laura Tunstall, Mette-Marie Kongsved, Katie Holly, Evan Horan
Stars:    Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Jonathan French, Steve Wall

Review Score:

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Summary:

One year after her twin sister's gruesome death, a blind psychic uses supernatural means to uncover the dark truth behind the murder's mystery.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Olin Boole, a mentally disturbed man recently released from the psychiatric care of Dr. Ted Timmis, comes to the remote Timmis house to warn Ted's wife Dani that a dangerous intruder supposedly sneaked inside her home when she wasn't looking. Upon realizing Olin is a patient of her husband's, Dani questions Olin's claim and hesitates to open the door. Dani is soon found brutally beaten to death by a hammer and authorities identify Olin as the culprit.

Sometime after Dani's murder, halfway-house resident Declan Barrett discovers Olin, who had been living in a room next door, violently murdered with his head torn apart. From the bloody mess, Declan recovers the glass eye that Olin wore.

One year later, Ted Timmis visits his wife's twin sister Darcy Odello, a blind psychic, at the curio shop she runs. Darcy shows Ted a supposedly haunted bell that was cursed by a murdered bellboy. Darcy mentions that the last two people who rang the bell were reportedly killed by the bellhop's ghost.

Ted tells Darcy that his patient Declan died the previous week and Olin Boole's eye was discovered among his possessions. Ted hands over the eye, which Darcy had been searching for because she believes it will allow her powers as a medium to see into Olin's mind when he presumably killed her sister. After Ted leaves, Darcy conducts a private seance with the eye.

Ted's new girlfriend Yana, who now stays with him in the house where Dani's murder took place, informs Ted she believes Dani's ghost has been haunting her. Due to this, Yana tells Ted she plans to move back to her apartment until he stops leaving her alone while he works nights.

On the one-year anniversary of Dani's death, Darcy arrives at the house unexpectedly, even though Ted had previously extended an open invitation. Darcy unpacks an unsettling wooden man, which a witch gave to her mother as a gift, from a large crate she had delivered earlier. With Yana on her way back to the city and Ted on his way to work, the two of them reluctantly prepare to leave Darcy alone in the house.

Strangely unable to locate her car keys, Yana is forced to stay with Darcy. At his office, Ted goes through a file of disturbing images drawn by Declan Barrett and discovers one depicting Darcy's wooden man.

During a contentious conversation with Yana, Darcy reveals Olin Boole didn't kill her sister. Flashbacks show Olin left after Darcy refused to let him in, but a masked man in a black cloak murdered Darcy once she was alone. Darcy tells Yana that the killer was actually Ivan, an orderly who works with Ted.

Yana calls Ted, who had been playing chess with Ivan while discussing Ivan's recent encounter with Dani's twin sister, to report that Darcy somehow used Olin's eye to identify Ivan as Dani's killer. Yana expresses further worry over Darcy asking questions about how she and Ted became romantically involved.

Startled by the mannequin seemingly staring at her, Yana examines five holes in the wooden man's head. Yana pulls out a lock of hair, two photos of Dani and Darcy together, a tooth, and a vial of blood. Darcy suddenly wakes from sleeping and angrily demands that Yana replace everything, which she does.

Haunted by more visions of Dani, Yana rushes downstairs from her bedroom. Hearing noises from the trunk that contained the wooden man, Yana opens the box and finds her missing car keys. Yana hurriedly drives away in fright.

Ted returns home to find Darcy by herself. Darcy says Dani frightened away Yana when Ted asks where his girlfriend went. Ted also asks about Ivan being Dani's murderer instead of Olin. Darcy says Olin was merely trying to save Dani. Darcy then expresses remorse as she reveals she killed Olin because she thought he was responsible for her sister's death.

Darcy surprises Ted by revealing she also knows it was Ted who sent Ivan to kill Dani because Ted was having an affair with Yana. Olin overheard the conversation between Ted and Ivan, which is why he went to the house to warn Dani. Darcy vows to completely ruin Ted's life as revenge.

Still claiming he wasn't involved in Dani's death, Ted tells Darcy he will have the investigating officer on the case call her to verify Olin was the killer. On his way out, Ted quietly opens a trap door in the floor. Ted then goes to his office and calls Darcy. Darcy falls through the floor and into the cellar when she moves to answer the phone.

Ted sends Ivan to the house to check on Darcy's condition. Ivan finds Darcy dying on the cellar floor in a pool of her own blood. Summoning the psychic connection with her sister, Darcy supernaturally animates the wooden man and it attacks Ivan. Darcy sees a vision of Dani before she dies from her injuries.

Ivan recovers to find himself strapped to a hospital bed with Ted taunting him. Disbelieving Ivan's claim that the wooden man attacked him, Ted tells Ivan he burned the mannequin. Ivan confirms he wants to confess everything because he is terrified. Ted implies he will use Ivan's psychosis to implicate him in Dani and Darcy's deaths. After Ted leaves the room, another psychiatric patient begins gnawing on Ivan's toe.

Yana refuses to reunite with Ted or go back to his house in the aftermath. When Ted returns home, he finds a posthumous package from Darcy's curio shop on his doorstep. Inside, Ted finds the supposedly cursed bell Darcy previously showed him. Ted hesitantly rings it. Although Ted smilingly assumes nothing happened, the murdered bellhop's ghost appears behind him.

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Review:

"Oddity" is an atypical supernatural chiller in several ways. One of those ways lies in how it respects its audience more than average movies do, so it doesn't spoon feed viewers with blatant visual cues or onscreen text denoting the passage of time. Because of this, it may take a moment to get used to the film's occasionally nonlinear narrative, as the initial arrangement of events can have a confusing chronology. The brief summary up ahead should set things straight, which might benefit anyone who has yet to see the movie. This also means there are some light spoilers, but only for the first act.

Left home alone at night, Dani answers an unexpected knock at the door. On the other side of the peephole stands a hooded man with a glass eye. Frantically, the strange man warns Dani of a dangerous intruder who supposedly entered her house when she wasn't looking. Dani realizes the man, Olin, is one of her doctor husband's psychiatric patients. Olin insists she open the door so he can help protect her, but Dani isn't so sure she can trust the visibly disturbed man.

Cut to the title card followed by a scene of a second psychiatric patient living in a halfway house. Roused by awful sounds in an adjacent room, this man investigates and finds a gruesomely butchered corpse. With its head exploded into grotesque chunks, the body would be unidentifiable if not for one item pulled from the bloody mess: a glass eye.

Next, we're taken to a curio shop where Dani's husband Ted stops in to see the owner, Darcy, a blind psychic who is also Dani's twin sister. Over a phone call in the first scene, Dani asked her husband about inviting her sister for dinner. One might expect Ted to extend that invitation, except that's no longer the situation at all. It's been almost a full year since Dani died. Ted has come to hand over Olin's glass eye, because Darcy believes her abilities as a medium will allow her to use the eye to see into Olin's mind, and finally find out what really happened on the night he presumably murdered her sister.

Gradually, you'll put together that these three scenes are in order, there are just gaps between when they occurred. We don't witness it the first time we see her, but someone killed Dani after the pre-title prologue. Sometime after that, someone then killed the presumed culprit, Olin, too. "Oddity" eventually fills in more blanks with precisely planted flashbacks, but the rest of the film unfolds on the "One Year Later" timeline, with only early dialogue between Ted and Darcy clarifying where we are and exactly what happened.

This isn't by mistake. The intended effect isn't to confound viewers, either. These jumps are part of a deliberate strategy to mix up your mind, unbalancing equilibrium to tilt your perspective into a position where it's not on a totally level track. If writer/director Damian McCarthy instead chose to tell this story traditionally, it would be easier to see swerves coming up on the road, and the movie might play out more predictably as a result. It's the cleverness in composition that gives "Oddity" its edge as a macabre slice of suspense that keeps you unsettled by keeping the format fractured.

"Oddity" employs a number of horror hallmarks, including the blind psychic, asylum inmates, a remote manor, and cursed items, which in this case include a haunted hotel bell and a wooden mannequin that should join the "Talk to Me" hand and "Mister Babadook" pop-up book among the top props in modern horror iconography. As with the nonlinear frame, it's the manner in which the movie utilizes these elements that makes what's familiar feel fresh. McCarthy inverts and subtly subverts tropes so they stay in service to the script rather than become pedestrian dots it strains to connect. It's akin to how George Lucas always insisted FX should be a tool for storytelling, not the focal point. That's how "Oddity" approaches B-movie conventions: not as sore thumbs sticking out to be noticed, but as common tools to tell a tale of terror.

And the tale "Oddity" tells summons the spirit of an EC Comics morality fable, except without the black comedy or grinning horror host quipping punny one-liners. Often when a genre movie can be described as "moody," it's because artistic atmosphere is all that film has been built on. For "Oddity," a true narrative drives its dark heart, giving dimension to dread that few fright films are ever able to competently create like this movie does.

Review Score: 70

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