Oddity

What would you do if your spouse was murdered at your new house? A house which is unfurnished, looks like a small castle, and is in a remote area? If you would move in with your new girlfriend less than a year later, then you might be Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee), a doctor at the nearby psych ward. And if that makes you suspicious of Ted, despite the murderer having been found to be an escaped patient from that psych ward named Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy), then you might have more in common with Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), twin sister of the deceased, who runs a shop in the city full of trinkets and artifacts she believes to be imbued with magic. When she shows up for dinner with Ted and Yana (Caroline Menton) due to a forgotten invitation, the same day as a creepy, wooden sculpture of a man screaming, the night promises to get weird.

The biggest mistake this movie makes is tipping its hand too soon, which it does across a few dimensions. It's very deliberate, as director Damian Mc Carthy wants us fully present for the horror he's going to throw our way over the back half of the film, not trying to work out the truth of what's going on. But it drains much of the suspense, which would otherwise have been an important asset for a story primarily taking place in a single location. We quickly learn that Darcy is truly psychic, able to see someone's past actions by touching a personal item of theirs. With the recent death of Boole, she gets a hold of his glass eye, and confirms her belief that he wasn't the killer. Which along with a bunch of other signals, points us in one and only one direction.

The atmosphere throughout is suitably creepy, amplified by the severe stone walls contrasting with the new yet unstable looking wooden walkways forming the second floor. There are frequent creaks and distant banging, giving Yana the feeling Darcy isn't the only other person in the house. These are withheld for quite some time, with only momentary glimpses of what could be their source, causing us to question her mental state. Frustratingly, Mc Carthy lacks confidence in his ability to hold your attention, so he resorts to lazy jump scares all too often. Not that jump scares are always bad: in fact, there are a couple well-deployed instances here. But they don't feel earned when they startle you by simply accompanying a surprising or horrific image by a loud, often shrill noise. You can get the same reaction by tapping some unsuspecting person on the shoulder and shouting "Boo!" in their ear. It's too bad, because the ghost story elements give plenty of opportunities to use a silent presence to catch us off guard as we examine the screen for details.

Granted, much of that unsettling imagery and atmosphere seems to be unmotivated, just stringing together random bits of a haunting. So often it goes nowhere despite tying into or even being part of the main plot, or at least comes from nowhere. For example, Darcy mimicking the pose of the wooden man statue, or the couple times Yana and Ted see Dani's ghost for just an instant. There's no need to tell the audience whether or not the ghost was real or imagined, but without their visions leading to something, anything, it's just a random image.

The result is a film that is disjointed and unsatisfying, which doesn't have much to say. While it involves revenge and grief and guilt and hubris and the supernatural, there's no point to the story. Which would have been fine if its other mechanisms were functioning. Without that, you're left with some creative but aimless visuals. That tells me Mc Carthy probably has some good ideas in him, so I should really check out his debut, Caveat, from a few years back, as well as keep an eye on what he does next. But despite the many comparisons I've seen between this and Longlegs, this doesn't hold a candle to it.