Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 Review: Oddity – “A horror fan’s delight of murder, revenge and the supernatural”

Directed by Damian McCarthy
Starring Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Steve Wall, Jonathan French

My first screening of this year’s 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and it was a welcome return to the very late-night strand, which we used to enjoy in previous, pre-Covid years at the Filmhouse, when films which suit that late-night atmosphere (usually horrors) would be screened. This year, the Filmhouse still being closed (but with the fundraiser successful, currently renovating for its return, hurrah!), the equally wonderful old Art-Deco Cameo Cinema, long a part of the film fest, welcomed us into its comfy seats. The show may not have been starting until midnight, but the place was bustling, the crowd in excited, enthusiastic mood despite the lateness of the hour, and the excitement mounted as we had some of the cast and crew present for a brief talk before the showing.

Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in an old, rural set of buildings she and her husband are slowly renovating, well outside of the city. Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee) is a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, and forced to work nights, meaning his wife is entirely alone in her isolated, large house. Dani is delighted to find that despite the remoteness, she has managed to find one spot, upstairs, in a far corner, where she can get a phone signal, and chats to her husband as she finishes some repairs, before retiring to the small tent she has set up in the ground floor area to stay in for the night (both the phone signal and the renovations will be referenced again as the film unfolds).

Despite nothing having happened yet, the film’s opening moments are adept at starting to build an atmosphere of unease and menace; the isolation of the location and Dani, the bare, unfinished old stone building interior, and most especially the soundscape all contribute hugely to his. The sounds throughout are vitally important in building that atmosphere in Oddity, from unsettling music to simple but incredibly effective sound effects, like the creaking of old wooden beams and floors. Sure, that could just be the sounds of an old building on a windy night, couldn’t it? I mean, surely that’s all it is…

Dani is startled on finding there is someone in the courtyard when she goes to retrieve something from her car, despite the remoteness of the building, and flees back into the building as the person knocks on the door and demands entry. She slowly slides a viewing panel back to reveal an unkempt man with wild hair, and one glass eye, who turns out to be one of her husband’s former patients. She is understandably terrified by this, but he begs her to let him in, insisting he is no threat to her – on the contrary, he believes she is in danger and that he saw someone sneak into the building when she was at her car, that person now being in there with her. Poor Dani is now double terrified – she thinks the man at the door is the threat, but what if there is really someone inside, as he is warning? The creaks and groans of the old building build this suspense to an unbearable pitch.

I’ll give out a spoiler warning here in case you don’t want to know anymore, then don’t go past this point. That said this is a mild spoiler, as most of the promotional blurb I have seen for the film all give this away in their descriptions: Dani is indeed killed, by a creepy, masked figure inside the house. We move forward a year and her bereaved husband is visiting Dani’s twin sister (also Bracken), Darcy, a blind woman who claims to have certain psychic powers, who runs the old curiosity shop their mother left to her, a place filled with disturbing items, most of which have a story attached to them.

Darcy can pick up the truth of someone from handling a personal item, like a watch, or a ring – or a glass eye. She has asked Ted to bring this item from her sister’s killer, Olin (Tadhg Murphy), who was blamed for the murder, and who himself was subsequently murdered. Through it she intends to learn the truth of her twin’s brutal death, and after a vague promise to invite her over for dinner around the anniversary of the death, Ted leaves, having unsettled Darcy by revealing that he is already living with a new girlfriend, still in the same house where Dani was murdered (the girlfriend, Yana – Caroline Menton – is, as you can imagine, less than happy about staying there, especially as Ted still works nights, leaving her alone there, and she’s sure she has glimpsed Dani’s ghost in the shadows).

I don’t want to get too much deeper into the second half as I don’t want to spoil it; suffice to say events are not all as they have been previously been explained, which is, of course, not really a surprise (I mean it wouldn’t be much of a film if it were all as they said!). Darcy makes an unexpected visit, bringing a large trunk which contains a life-sized wooden male figure that is incredibly disturbing (you’re just waiting for it to move), and sets in motion a plan to reveal what really happened on the night of Dani’s murder.

A lot of the set-up will be quite familiar to any regular horror fan, especially those of us who loved works like the old EC comics, with those killing and revenge from beyond type tales. You can often see what is coming, and while in most films that is a failing, here it isn’t – McCarthy clearly loves those old stories too, and in fact I think was revelling in them. You know roughly where it is going, and it doesn’t matter because it is so well done it’s still immensely satisfying. Even some of the scares are well-telegraphed – you can see the set-up, you know full well any moment that jump scare is coming, as McCarthy and his crew ratchet it up, and up, and up, and suddenly there’s that release. And despite knowing it was coming, I still jumped like the rest of the audience (when you’re a seasoned horror hound, plus you know it is coming, yet it still get you? That’s some good, creepy horror film making!)

Yes, you will recognise many of the beats and tropes here, and I think that is partly the point – this is made for those of us who love our horror films, books and comics, and appreciate seeing work from someone who obviously loves them too (one of us). And as I said, despite the fact that so many set-ups here are familiar, they are so damned well-done that they are very satisfying to watch play out. Making the most of its few locations (the remote, creaking old, isolated mansion, the decaying, depressing psychiatric hospital) and small cast, and with just a few well-deployed props (the life-sized wooden figure is just superbly creepy), used well, Oddity is a horror fan’s delight of murder, revenge and the supernatural, dripping creepy, unsettling atmosphere throughout. One to watch late at night.