Caroline Menton as Yana looks inside the mouth of a wooden doll that is sitting at a table with its mouth open in a perpetual scream in a still from Oddity.
The Big Picture This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
Thankfully, there are films like Oddity that fall into the creative category. Written and directed by Damian McCarthy, whose feature debut Caveat was a wonderfully chilling introduction, it is as genuinely scary as it is darkly funny. Remaining aware of genre enough to playfully skewer it just as it manages to be truly terrifying in an almost classical sense, it is the type of film that grows on you. When the bottom drops out from under it, you feel every moment of the fall.
Not only is Ted still living there, but he is doing so with his new girlfriend Yana , whom he met through his work. When Dani’s sister Darcy, also played by Bracken, arrives at the house bearing a strange gift, neither Ted nor Yana quite know what to do. Eventually, he goes off to work, and she stays for longer than she had hoped to do so.
The film has a strong sense of patience, building up a sense of dread until it is almost suffocating. There are bursts of brutality and some moments designed to make you jump, though these work because of the more restrained way we are taken further into the darkness. Spending time primarily either in the isolated residence with Yana and Darcy or at Ted’s work, McCarthy never once misses an opportunity to keep cranking up the dread.
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