The writer and director Damian McCarthy is one of Ireland’s most exciting emerging talents. You can learn a lot about the mechanics of fear from the Bantry film-maker’s nifty second feature. Eschewing the weighty grief-is-the-real-horror vogue for old-school enchanted objects and evil-doers, Oddity is pleasingly pitched between 1970s Amicus Productions pictures and Goosebumps for grown-ups.
A note-perfect opening sets the tone. A manic one-eyed man (Tadhg Murphy) knocks on a door in an isolated place. He warns the terrified woman inside (Carolyn Bracken), who is home alone as her doctor husband is on his rounds at a nearby asylum, that someone else is already in her house.
Is the stranger an escaped madman? Is an interloper lurking behind her? Or is the man on her doorstep the real danger? These and other concerns are answered in well-gauged revelations as the film cuts to the dramatic aftermath. A year on from the overture, the widowed doctor has found solace in pharmaceutical rep Yana (Caroline Menton) as he reluctantly reconnects with his late wife’s blind, possibly clairvoyant twin sister, Darcy (Bracken, impressively double-jobbing).
A creepy wooden man, sculpted by art director Paul McDonnell, ushers in an unsettling family reunion.
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Oddity’s mythology, most notably the backstory for the golem and Darcy’s shop of haunted objects, is intriguing if a little underdeveloped. The shot list of McCarthy’s cinematographer, Colm Hogan, is inventive but would have greatly benefited from the grit and grain of film stock.
No matter. Timing is everything.
And McCarthy’s directorial precision is complemented by wit and an imaginative backstory that deserves an expanded universe. Darcy’s emporium of haunted artefacts – a welcome Irish variant of the shop where Mr Wing housed Gizmo in Gremlins – could easily spawn a spin-off series.
Steve Wall, making the most of his characterful visage, is supremely sinister as a hospital orderly.
Oddity is in cinemas from Friday, August 30th
