This Horror Masterpiece With 96% on RT Is the Biggest Hidden Gem of the Year
You can't miss this one.
In 2020, Damian McCarthy released an auteur horror film, Caveat, which received a high score from critics – 83% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which is very good for a low-budget debut.
This year, McCarthy returned with a new film based on his own screenplay. But this time he added even more detective and personal drama to the story. The result is Oddity – an unsettling horror that scares less with jumpscares than with its uncomfortable atmosphere.
What Is Oddity About?
Dani and Ted move into a country house: it looks cold and uncomfortable, and the cell phone signal only works in one corner on the second floor. The wife takes on the renovation while her husband works at a psychiatric clinic. One night, while Ted is on duty, a patient from his clinic comes to Dani's house. Then the woman is found beaten to death.
A year later, Darcy, the blind twin sister of the deceased, comes to Ted's house, where he has already started a new life with his beloved Yana. The guest is sure that the wrong person has been named as the murderer. And she can prove it, because Darcy believes that she can communicate with spirits.
Oddity Masterfully Blends Crime and Horror Genres
The beginning of the movie is a deception. It all starts like a classic horror movie about a haunted house: a couple moves to a new place, there is a camera that keeps taking pictures. It seems that soon they will have to fight an evil ghost, and of course the sister, who everyone thinks is strange, will help them.
But after the introduction the movie makes a sharp turn to realism and makes you guess: is the author planning to scare the audience with mysticism or is he going to turn everything into a rational detective story?
This looks partly like the opposite of the acclaimed Longlegs, where a completely traditional thriller suddenly goes into the supernatural and leaves some events unexplained.
McCarthy is more careful, balancing between two genres. The main action is built more on the anxious communication of the three main participants in the events: Ted, Darcy and Yana.
Oddity Keeps Viewers on the Edge of Their Seats With Numerous Mysteries
Yana does not really understand what is happening and discovers more and more strange things. She finds Dani's camera and then loses the car keys – or is someone hiding them on purpose?
It's not that hard to guess the true state of affairs. What's more interesting is how exactly it happened and how the story will end. For a long time it's unclear if Darcy really has some kind of gift or if she's just a strange person living in her own world.
Oddity doesn't pretend to be a breakthrough in the genre. Its plot contains many references to the classics of horror. But Damian McCarthy has made a very atmospheric horror movie that captivates with its dark atmosphere.
Where to Watch Oddity?
The film is only one and a half hours long, but the story develops quickly, so there is no time to get bored. Oddity is available on Prime Video and Apple TV.