Movie Review: 'Oddity' Starring Gwilym Lee

Oddity (2024)

Directed by Damian Mc Carthy

Written by Damian Mc Carthy

Starring Gwilym Lee, Caroline Bracken

Release Date July 19th, 2024

Published July 19th, 2024

Oddity stars Caroline Bracken as twin sisters, Dani and Darcy. We meet Dani first as she is cleaning up her gorgeous new home in the middle of an English countryside. Her sister, Darcy, believes the home is haunted and has Dani doing all sorts of things in an attempt to get information on the potential haunting. Indeed, there are some strange noises in the house but there is a far more sinister, real life threat coming for Dani. With her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), working nights, Dani is all alone in this house.

Late one night, as Dani retrieves something from her car and heads back into the house, she’s nearly followed inside. A man knocks on the door and offers a terrifying warning: He saw someone sneak into the house while she wasn’t looking. He wants Dani to let him come inside and find the guy in order to keep her safe. The man has a crazed look in his eyes, he’s a stranger, and, since Dani’s husband works at a nearby mental hospital, she’s rightly concerned that he may be a loose mental patient.

Dani decides not to let the man into the house, and, soon after, she is slaughtered by a man in a terrifying mask. Cut to one year later, Ted goes to see Darcy as she is working in her curio shop. Darcy collects occult items and sells them to collectors. Some things she sells, not all of them. The items that are far too dangerous, she keeps and hides away. Ted doesn’t believe in the occult but Darcy is quick to warn him of the folly of underestimating what he cannot see. In passing, Ted invites Darcy to the house for dinner with himself and his new girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menton).

Unaware that Ted had moved on less than a year after her sister’s death, Darcy is taken aback but puts on a brave face. Less than a week later, Darcy will show up to the house for that dinner and with a gift for Ted and his new girlfriend. I won’t spoil what the gift is but if you’ve seen the trailer, you know exactly what it is. It’s an incredible piece of visual horror, as good or better than the creepy mask the killer wore when he murdered Dani. I love this thing, it reminded me of some truly ancient horror monsters, dating back to even before Frankenstein’s monster.

Oddity is spooky and strange and I was all in from the start. The film has a grabber of a premise and, in star Carolyn Bracken, it has a haunted lead actress who is unlike any lead in a horror movie that we’ve ever seen. She’s not charming, she’s not funny, she’s deeply odd but, compared to the other characters, she’s the only sympathetic character in the movie. And that’s not just because Darcy is blind. Darcy’s blindness is not a gimmick for the movie, it’s merely a fact of her life and I appreciated the less than exploitative approach. Her being blind does have some thematic and plot related elements but the movie doesn’t overdo these elements.

Oddity has a terrifically creepy atmosphere. The evil at play is palpable, it gets under your skin. It’s a bit cerebral and a bit of a slow burn, but I didn’t mind at all as the oppressive horror atmosphere works for the story being told. Damian Mc Carthy demonstrates care for all of the tools of the filmmaking trade. Editing, music, effects, and production design are all working together to tell this story. Some directors may skimp on one element or another. Really talented filmmakers understand how to use all of the tools at their disposal. Mc Carthy shows that he’s here to make the most of the tools of the trade and Oddity makes me excited to see what he does next.

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