Oddity (2024) is an Irish horror film. This is surprising, as it contains no drunken brawls, leprechauns or Guinness. What it does contain is decent elements across the board. Let’s take a spoiler-free look.
Oddity
Oddity is written and directed by Damian McCarthy. It is his second film (Caveat from 2020 was his first). The plot is simple, tried and true. A woman is killed, and her sister seeks revenge on those responsible.
Oddity is not a Death Wish-type film, however. The sister is not an ordinary woman driven to extreme lengths. Rather, the riff is that she is a blind witch. This unique take on the subject sends the film into a more original tangent. It may not be great, but it is interesting.
Carolyn Bracken plays the blind sister, and the regular sister, for that matter (they are twins). Bracken is also an Irish lass with a limited credit list. She does well in the role. I didn’t even realize she played both parts because the twins look quite different onscreen. The murdered one is a brunette. The blind-witch one has short, platinum-blond hair.
The rest of the cast is filled out by Gwilym Lee (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the murdered woman’s husband, Steve Wall (The Witcher) as one of the husband’s coworkers, Caroline Menton as the husband’s new girlfriend and one-eyed Tadhg Murphy as a plot device.
Admittedly, I could not place Tadhg. I knew him from something and had to look him up. Turns out, he was in one of my favorite modern flicks, Wrath of Man.
Oddity Ball
Since Oddity is a low-budget affair, it only has two locations. An old country house built in a square around an atrium and a mental asylum, where the husband works. With limited resources, McCarthy is forced to make things work via story and acting.
For the most part, McCarthy succeeds. He introduces enough wrinkles to keep things interesting. The highlight of these is a life-size wooden figure that is the witch’s Golem.
The bulk of the film takes place in the country house as the blind-witch sister comes to visit and figure out exactly what happened to her murdered sibling. A sufficient spooky mood is established. In order to scare the audience, McCarthy works mostly with jump scares. Whether one thinks jump scares are a cheap trick is up for debate, but McCarthy uses them well.
Essentially, the story ends up being a slightly more sophisticated version of an E.C. Horror Comic. When it comes to going this route, Zemeckis did it best with his Hitchcock-channeled What Lies Beneath.
McCarthy doesn’t have the budget or wherewithal to compete with that. In the end, he might have been better off trying to go the lurid Creepshow route rather than trying to prestige it up. Yet, when it comes to low-budget, it is probably easier to try to write up than it is down. Writing down would require a lot of squishy practical effects.
Oddity Man Out
Despite being a solid effort for the resources involved, Oddity gets dinged on a few things. It suffers from modern, bland, muted cinematography. Everything seems beige. I get that we are not going to go back to film from digital, but maybe someone could put a Technicolor setting on digital cameras?
Another issue is that an attempt at mystery is made within Oddity, but it doesn’t have enough meat on its bones to sustain it. A good mystery requires a wider cast of characters, so red herrings can be set up and pursued.
Since Oddity is limited in characters, it is easy to guess what is going on shortly into the film. The blind sister also doesn’t do any detective work. Since she is a witch, she magically knows what happened. The fun of the film is in anticipation of comeuppances, which is hindered by writing up rather than down.
Ultimately, the Oddity doesn’t build to anything. It simply maintains a moderate spooky level throughout. At least McCarthy knows that if he can’t keep the story interesting, he can keep it short. Oddity tops out at slightly over 90 minutes.
Oddity And Ends
Ultimately, Oddity is not a movie to watch on a Saturday night at 7 p.m. It doesn’t have the pop or the scenery-chewing performances. It is something to watch on a quiet night as one winds down for bed, preferably with a storm going on outside. It’s slightly odd take on a well-worn trope makes it intriguing.
McCarthy was on to something, but he could quite get the full idea onscreen. Oddity seems like a rough draft of something that could be a minor classic of the genre. The fact that it won an award at the South by Southwest Film Festival shows there is enough there to appreciate, but it is not something to hang on the wall and admire into perpetuity.
