‘Oddity’ Review: Twisted Sister

Coolly executed and seductively simple, “Oddity,” the second feature from Damian McCarthy (after the unsettling, underseen “Caveat” in 2021), is a fun, back-to-basics supernatural thriller that cares more about making us jump than making us cringe.

To that end, most of the violence remains offscreen, leaving us to ponder its bloody aftermath. Set largely inside a rambling, barely habitable house in the Irish countryside, the movie opens with a terrifying encounter between Dani (Carolyn Bracken) and a crazed visitor (Tadhg Murphy) who claims to have seen someone enter her home. Disturbed by the man’s agitation and milky glass eye, and unable to reach her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), a doctor working the night shift at a nearby psychiatric hospital, Dani hesitates. Fatally.

One year later, Ted and his new girlfriend (Caroline Menton) are dismayed by the arrival of Dani’s blind twin sister, Darcy (also played by Bracken), a psychic who owns a curio shop in the city. Darcy plans to unearth the truth about her sister’s death, and she has brought a companion: a hideous, life-size wooden figure with a gaping mouth and a head full of holes. This might be viewed by some as a metaphor for the plot; but for “Oddity,” economical to a fault, entertainment trumps enlightenment.

Joining a thriving cohort of Irish filmmakers working in horror or on its fringes, McCarthy has a cheeky sense of humor and a clear love for genre traditions. Colm Hogan’s photography is clean and calm, his God’s-eye shots rich with icy foreboding, while Aza Hand’s sound design is lush and at times almost bestial. These ensure an atmosphere that’s rarely less than creepy and occasionally jolting, helping us forgive the underwritten characters and vague jiggery-pokery. How can you chastise a movie that so clearly wants to leave you smiling?

Oddity
Rated R for a mashed head and chewed tootsies. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters.