Honorary Financial Secretary Venesya Ko reviews Damian McCarthy’s horror film Oddity and finds a new kind of scariness.

Editorial note: This review contains spoilers

As a horror film fan who is ironically–scared of the paranormal, supernatural horror films are not what I usually gravitate towards. While this year has seen a lot of fanfare and social media buzz surrounding psychological thrillers such as Longlegs (2024), slashers–which often relies on gore and supernatural elements–have not received as much attention. Personally, those I’ve seen this year have either been disappointing sequels like MaXXXine (2024), or films that were so ridiculous that they became fun, like Abigail (2024) and Tarot (2024), but not exactly scary. As such, watching Oddity and being genuinely scared and surprised by the way the film blended the supernatural and realism to terrify its audience was such a breath of fresh air. 

Oddity (2024) is an Irish horror film written and directed by Damian McCarthy, whose debut film Caveat (2020) was praised for its unsettling atmosphere. This was an element he brought into the eerie, occult world of Oddity. The premise of the film itself is unique, providing enough details to set up a mystery, but still scarce enough to ignite any curiosity towards the film.

Dani Odello-Timmis is brutally murdered in the country house she shares with her husband, psychologist Ted Timmis. Yet, the opening sequence ends without showing the audience how or when she dies, so now you’re terrified and curious. Dani’s death was dismissed as a seemingly straightforward open-and-shut case by everyone, and one of Ted’s previous patients is convicted for the murder. A year after the brutal crime, Dani’s twin sister Darcy, revisits the case with revenge in mind after she realises not all is as it seems about her sister’s cruel demise.

Oddity’s horror is expertly executed by the discomforting dread and tension that builds up throughout the film. From the opening itself, when we are shown the worst scenario that can happen to anyone who is home alone (being told by a stranger that someone has infiltrated your home) the audience knows to let their guard up.

The entire opening sequence is set up to leave the audience unsettled–from the secluded, large house, to the camera that keeps snapping pictures on its own and the suspicious man that shows up warning Dani of her death–you just know something horrible is going to happen. You spend the entire film hoping it ends soon, but are unable to pull  away from the screen, which is truly the best kind of feeling to have when you’re watching a horror film. 

The fear that Oddity invokes is creepingly slow and suspenseful, especially in the way the film understands how to scare instead of going out of its way to impress. It does particularly by utilising silence instead of sound to scare, as well as bringing in an unexpectedly more emotional aspect to the film.

Most horror films rely on menacing and loud sound design to scare the audience. But Oddity strangely relies more on the lack of sound to scare, it’s not about jolting in your seat after a loud shriek, it’s about wanting to melt into your seat the entire time. I realised that halfway through the film, because the silence of the film was so intense, even the innocent sounds of my own room creeped me out, there becomes an inability to discern whether the sound is coming from the film or your own space and that is another way Oddity successfully builds atmosphere.

There’s also the fact that all the horror, is contained solely in one space–the house. It is essentially a crime scene, a haunted building that is still littered with Dani’s belongings, and it will become the setting of Darcy’s revenge. The containment traps the audience just as much as it does the characters, forcing us to repeatedly observe  the same haunted space, and causing  our imagination to work until  we begin to overthink and fear what we see. The wooden puppet with its gaping mouth is uncannily human-like, it is in the background of almost every shot, but when will it strike?

When the circumstances of Dani’s death is finally revealed to the audience, it is heartbreaking to realise that she made all the right choices to protect herself, that the cause of her death was rooted in the entitlement and cruelty of men. Carolyn Bracken, who plays both Dani and Darcy, gives a convincing and moving performance throughout the film. Her distressed wails and the acrid speech she delivers when confronting her sister’s true killer lingers especially long after the film ends. The film emphasis the brutal rawness of it by foregrounding her voice over the eerie soundtrack that resembles a soft but uncomfortable whistle. The explosion of her grief, expressed through sound, is almost as horrifying as what happened to her sister–something that happens to so many women in real life. 

And it is equally appalling when in the following scene, the killer manipulates Darcy by taking advantage of her blindness and uses sound to lure her into a trap. Sound then becomes more than just a medium that is used to scare the audience, but also an element that the characters can utilise as weapons to execute their emotions and intentions–whether it is grief, or malice, or anger–and this is further reinforced by Darcy’s manipulation of the wooden puppet.

The scene in which she finally brings this ominous device to life, is filled with echoes and high-pitch keening animalistic sounds that softly haunts. The musical accompaniment is not thunderous, but it is eerie and disturbing, a reflection of the uncanny occult ritual she is performing. As such, it is almost as if the music is the embodiment of Dani and Darcy’s combined anger and suffering, it is meant to be haunting and dreadful despite its weird gentleness.

The film does have a very ‘scary story told during a sleepover’ kind of feel to it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be the first in an anthology series of horror films. Either way, I certainly will be tuning in to McCarthy’s next film. Oddity doesn’t overstay its welcome, it’s a film that effectively packs dread and emotion into its 100-minute runtime because it knows it’s supposed to be unforgettable, and that’s exactly what it does. 

And what adds to the film’s uniqueness is that it subverts the usual “ghost” horror film tropes. In this one, supernatural horror  is also depicted as a means for love to continue, or as a means to grieve, rather than a purely evil force. In a sense, the film has a very Mike Flanagan feel to it, like a Haunting of Hill House-esque (2018) story that explores grief as much as it does with the horror aspects, it emphasises the way tragedy affects loved ones, and foregrounds the idea that everything is haunting if you miss someone enough.

I think it’s very interesting that the occult is shown to be powerful but not painted negatively and is instead tied to memory and love: As a psychic, Darcy is able to read objects left behind by the dead, the wooden doll that is integral to Darcy’s plan is filled with pictures of the sisters, the entire house is still filled with Dani’s belongings and her spectre can be seen hovering in the air. It’s almost beautiful that the film seems to be saying one’s existence cannot be so easily forgotten, that as long as you were loved and held unto, by a person or an item, you will always remain.