Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Oddity’ on Shudder, a Fascinating Horror Mashup About a Blind Psychic and her Creepy Mannequin Pal

Oddity ( now streaming on Shudder ) is one of the more refreshing and original horror outings in recent memory. Irish writer-director Damian Mc Carthy crafted a slow-burn atmospheric genre-hopper that makes the most of its distinctive location (a bizarre castle-home in the woods), its disturbing props (a golem-esque wooden mannequin that may or may not be able to move by itself) and the notion that ghosts and supernatural phenomena aren’t by their nature evil (think Guillermo del Toro films). So, review spoiler alert: This one’s a keeper.

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The Gist: This house. Jeez. It’s so remote in locale, it’s beyond a cursed-looking woods and a lichen-covered lake. It’s an old stone castle with a courtyard in the middle of it, and it looks like it has at best only ever dreamed of having plumbing. Dani (Carolyn Bracken) and Tim (Gwilym Lee) are refurbing it into a modern dwelling, but until then, they apparently find it “fun” to pitch a tent on the floor and camp out in this cold, empty, dimly lit place. Tim is a doctor who works overnights at – get this – a mental hospital. The type of mental hospital with shabby little rooms and scary patients whose charts read like Stephen King novels. So do the math: Dr. Tim has disturbed patients and Dani sleeps alone all night in a tent in an empty ancient castle that’s so far away from civilization it might as well be on the Moon. What could possibly go wrong?

Let it be known that the “normal” stuff of Tim and Dani’s reality includes even weirder things, but we don’t learn that until after – not a spoiler! – Dani is murdered one fateful evening while she’s alone in the house. One of Dr. Tim’s patients, a man with a crazy glass eye named Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy), knocked on the door and tried to convince her that someone was in the house with her. He seemed sincere, but do you trust him? We don’t see what happens and we jump forward to the one-year anniversary of Dani’s death, when Dr. Tim drops in to visit – get this – Dani’s twin sister Darcy (also played by Bracken) who has stark-white hair and is blind and owns an antique shop full of “cursed” items that she “reads” psychometrically, e.g., she can handle your grandmother’s heirloom brooch and “see” its history. Tim, a man of science, sure seems to consider her to be an Odd Duck, and sure seems to consider all this woo-woo to be hokum – or all this hokum to be woo-woo? – and Tim sure seems to be right.

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But. Tim still lives in the house. Despite the fact that his wife was murdered there. With his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Curious. But he’s not a superstitious guy, and blood cleans up with a little elbow grease, I guess. Yana isn’t too thrilled that a creepy trunk was delivered to the house with a life-size wooden mannequin in it. Think less department-store mannequin, more carved-from-an-ancient-gnarled-tree mannequin. And then knock knock knock Darcy arrives for an unannounced visit. She sent ol’ stiffy over there as a gift. Ain’t he sweet, with his howling open-mouthed rictus and empty empty eyes? She insists on staying and whaddaya gonna do? Send a blind lady packing? Tim has to go to work and Yana has plans in the city (truth: she quite understandably hates being alone in the house even when the loony psychic sister-in-law and the Pinocchio from the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Cinematic Universe aren’t visiting). But Yana can’t find her keys, and Darcy seems to have more on her mind than being an imposition.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The vibes of del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and underrated Crimson Peak course beneath Oddity , which also comes off as Needful Things meets, of course, Mannequin . There’s also a segment from (the almost entirely forgotten) Tales From The Darkside: The Movie called “Lot 249” that plays in a similar space.

Performance Worth Watching: Bracken is terrific as the strange, strange (strange!) Darcy, who keeps us on our toes as we try to parse her intentions.

Memorable Dialogue: Darcy’s shoplifting prevention system: “Curses are lifted at the time of purchase.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Oddity is a ghost story, a whodunnit, a jump-scare freakout, a twisty slow-burn psychothriller and a revenge saga all wrapped into one taut little horror film. It incorporates haunted artifacts, supernatural powers, a thoughtfully considered locale, a creepy orderly, a man with a glass eye, a deeply fascinating and unsettling lead character (Darcy is the story’s linchpin) and more. That’s a lot of moving parts, but Mc Carthy is a patient and precise director who crafts this reality like a Swiss watch, which is especially refreshing considering how so many horror films wouldn’t know subtlety if it smashed their skulls with a peen hammer.

The tightness of the screenplay’s core mechanics allows Mc Carthy to employ understated provocation in the form of Darcy, whose presence is so otherworldly, it prompts us to make assumptions. Assumptions that Mc Carthy calmly and quietly undermines, making you wonder if your alliances with certain characters should shift or stay pat or even exist in the first place. The director also toys with the tone, feinting with droll humor so he can wallop us with upsetting, startling imagery and plot revelations. He slowly ramps up the tension, generally avoids transparently manipulative genre tropes and remains perfectly calm as, for example, a very morbidly curious Yana reaches… her… hand… toward… the mannequin’s… gaping mouth, as we wonder if she’ll lose the damn thing.

Oddity is in many ways a crafty exercise in mood and technique. That seems to be Mc Carthy’s primary ambition – to make a horror film that stirs ingredients from multiple subgenres into a delicious savory stew. But he also explores the nature of sight, through blind characters, characters with one eye, characters who use cameras and characters who can see more than what’s, you know, there . Do we believe only what we can see? Are ghosts and supernatural phenomena arbiters of doom or truth? I know one thing – anyone who likes to be surprised will want to see this movie.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Mc Carthy is one hell of a promising filmmaker.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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