‘Oddity’ Review: Twisted Sister – The New York Times

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‘Oddity’ Review: Twisted Sister – The New York Times

Coolly ********* and seductively simple, “Oddity,” the second feature from Damian McCarthy (

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), 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 ********* ******** offscreen, leaving us to ponder its ******* 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. ********** 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 ****** 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 ******, 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.

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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 ****’s-eye shots rich with icy foreboding, while Aza Hand’s sound design is lush and at times almost ********. 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.

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