Oddity

There are points in Damian Mc Carthy’s tightly wound horror thriller when you will stop and mentally rewind, reassessing what you have previously seen. Hearing someone enter her antique shop, blind Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) calls out a warning: don’t risk stealing anything, because every item there carries a curse which will only be lifted when money changes hands. She’s a clever woman, but then so was her sister. Too clever, she thinks, to have opened the door of her remote home to a strange man in the middle of the night. Some other cleverness must have led to her death, and now, having acquired a very special object, Darcy is going to find out what. But wait. Is this a trick being played on the audience? Does she already know?

When exploring the supernatural in fiction, there is always a danger of succumbing to the temptation offered by dei ex machinas. Too often, writers content themselves with purely supernatural solutions, depriving readers or viewers of the pleasures of figuring it out for themselves, or of having their subconscious suspicions confirmed. It is a rare thing to come across a tale as carefully constructed as this one, which is as much about psychology as parapsychology and which, for all its twists and turns, has clear lines of logic running throughout. Dark as it gets, it’s illuminated by flashes of wit that will delight you.

The sister is gone; her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), is still living in the house, which he now shares with girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). It has been fixed up now, partitioned like a stage set, creating plenty of shooting options within a single location – no longer the little tent between bare walls in which the sister sheltered when she was fixing it up, haunted by Blair Witch-style shadows whilst Ted sat comfortably in his office in the psychiatric institution from which troubled patient Olin (Tadhg Murphy) had recently been released. Darcy didn’t know Olin, but she has something of his, and it offers new insights. With this, and with a life-size wooden mannequin which she presents to Ted and Yana as a gift (much to the latter’s disgust), she will pursue her singular objective.

Right from the start, alone among those shadows with the sister, you’ll find your eyes darting around for signs of danger. Mc Carthy knows how to keep his audience on edge, and in places he delivers some very effective jump scares. But Darcy is immune to any fear of the dark. She is empowered to look where others dare not, and to see what they’ve missed. She also seems to be immune to the effects of other people’s disapproval, and as such she’s free to break every social rule, delighting in creating discomfort, yet always to a purpose.

The mannequin is a lovely piece of design, simple yet deeply discomfiting, connected with small items which have occult weight but whose purpose is never directly articulated – Mc Carthy knows better. In the scenes where she acts opposite it, Menton does an inspired job of exploring the space in which self-consciousness and middle class disapproval intersect with fear of the other. Lee maintains a slight aloofness, reminiscent in places of Peter Cushing, whilst Steve Wall lends a special kind of mundane unpleasantness to his colleague, Ivan. Present day gender politics are enriched by reference to the much older conflict of matriarchal tradition with patriarchal medicine, the mind of each of the women treated as a contested space and yet the men, ultimately, by no means secure in their own.

The character dynamics are acutely observed, the performances beautifully honed. Some of the set pieces might ring a bell with older viewers, but they’re no less satisfying for it. Oddity is a treat.