‘Oddity’ movie review: Irish haunted house movie packs plenty of chills

A blind woman uncovers the truth behind her twin sister’s brutal murder while staying at the country home where she was killed in Oddity, which is now playing in Prague cinemas after winning the midnight movies Audience Award at the 2024 SXSW film fest. This nifty little chiller from Damian Mc Carthy is frighteningly well-directed and genuinely creepy, even if the mystery elements of its narrative are disappointingly routine.

Oddity opens with a banger of an introduction: working to restore an isolated Irish estate while her husband has the night shift at a nearby psychiatric hospital, Dani Timmins (Carolyn Bracken) is startled by a visitor at the front door. A one-eyed man (Tadhg Murphy) tells her that he spotted a stranger enter her home while she was outside. He clearly seems like a threat… but what if he’s telling the truth?

This tense sequence works as its own little horror short, but it’s just the springboard for the main events of Oddity, which take place a year after Dani’s murder. Her blind sister Darcy (also played by Bracken, who is excellent in both roles) shows up at the now-renovated estate where Dani’s widower Ted (Gwilym Lee) and his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton) now reside.

Darcy, who runs a curio shop and has psychic abilities, wishes to pay her respects to her deceased sister, and the new couple invite her to stay the night out of begrudging politeness. But she’s really there to solve the mystery behind her sister’s murder, and she hasn’t come alone: inside a large crate is a giant wooden man with a permanent shout. You know, as a housewarming gift.

Oddity works like gangbusters as a creepy haunted house story, but the underlying narrative is a little less satisfying. The film handles the exposition about Ted and new girlfriend Yana so bluntly that we immediately clue in to what’s going on, and are two steps ahead of the story through much of the duration. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Mc Carthy’s script spends precious climactic moments telling us things that we (mostly) already know.

Within the country home, meanwhile, Oddity is a real treat. There are a lot of divergent elements that really nicely come together here, with the film smartly playing off our general fear of the unknown rather than one specific threat. And there’s some terrific climactic payoffs to things that were set up in the opening scene that we have long forgotten about.

And that creepy wooden man, who seems to sit himself at the dinner table, looms over the whole film. But while the wooden man is absolutely terrifying when he’s just sitting there and blankly staring forward, he’s a lot less scary in action during climactic scenes. A final gag, too, leaves us with less of a fright than with a “huh.”

Oddity doesn’t completely come together as best as it could have, but there’s enough that works to warrant a strong recommendation. Mc Carthy, following up his 2020 feature Caveat (shot at the same location), shows a lot of promise with this one, and establishes himself as a filmmaker to watch in the horror genre.