Oddity Review: Irish Horror Movie Is Eerie If Uneven

Oddity begins with a delicious horror conundrum. Alone in her newly purchased country house while her psychiatrist husband Ted (Gwylim Lee) works an overnight shift nearby, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) runs out into the dark to retrieve something from her car. When she hears a strange noise, she rushes back into the house and locks the […]

The post Oddity Review: Irish Horror Movie Is Eerie If Uneven appeared first on Den of Geek.

Oddity begins with a delicious horror conundrum. Alone in her newly purchased country house while her psychiatrist husband Ted (Gwylim Lee) works an overnight shift nearby, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) runs out into the dark to retrieve something from her car. When she hears a strange noise, she rushes back into the house and locks the door.

The sounds from outside intensify, prompting Dani to open a slot on the door, revealing a shocking sight: a haggard and intense man, staring at her with one glowing glass eye. The man begs Dani to let him in, a request she denies until he comes to the point. The man claims that he someone else is inside her house. He pleads with her to open the door before it’s too late. Despite his intimidating appearance, the man seems sincere and kind. What should Dani do?

It’s no spoiler to say that the evening ends with Dani death, as most of the film picks up a year later. However, this opening dilemma captures everything compelling and frustrating about Oddity. The sophomore feature from Irish filmmaker Damian Mc Carthy, Oddity stacks horror concept atop of horror concept, leaving viewers unsure of what kind of movie they’re watching. Is it about a madman with a glass eye? Is it about a masked killer that Dani psychic twin sister Darcy (both women played by Bracken) sees in her visions? Is it about Dani’s ghost haunting the house? Is it about cursed objects? Is it about the freakin’ terrifying life-size wooden puppet that Darcy brings into the house and everyone just accepts? To Mc Carthy’s credit, all of these disparate threads do come together in a coherent narrative.

Oddity focuses mostly on a single night, one year after Dani’s death. Dani’s blind twin Darcy arrives unannounced at the house that Ted now shares with his girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Although she claims to want to spend the anniversary mourning her sister with Ted, Darcy in fact seeks to uncover the truth about Dani’s demise.

Oddity runs into its biggest problems when it tries to make sense of the setup. One can accept that Ted would allow his former sister-in-law to come by the house and insist on staying overnigh