Oddity

After the brutal murder of her twin sister, Darcy is out for justice, and she has a shop full of haunted items to use as her tools for revenge.

Dani Odello-Timmis, a knit sweater and puffy vest wearing brunette, and her husband, the slim and ferret-faced preppy psychiatrist Ted Timmis, are renovating an old Irish country manor. Ted works overnight at the psychiatric hospital, which means that Dani is spending a lot of time alone in the empty house, slowly making progress on the renovations. But since the electricity has yet to be turned on, she is using a lantern at night, and sleeping in a tent in what will one day be their cavernous living room.

It is on one such night that Olin Boole, one of Ted’s former patients, recently released from the psychiatric hospital, appears at the door. Through the door’s Judas Gate, Olin warns Dani that a stranger is in the house, that she’s in danger, and that she needs to unlock the door and let him in. Olin definitely seems like a crazy person, but also, is he maybe right? Is there someone else in the house?

Dani is understandably torn.

One year later...

While we don’t know exactly what happened, whether or not Dani opened the door for Olan, we do one thing… Dani was brutally murdered that night, and that Olin is believed to be the one responsible. In the time since, he has been caught, and tried, and is back once again in the psychiatric hospital.

Then, on the night of the one year anniversary of Dani’s murder, Olin is found dead in his cell. He has been torn to pieces.

Meanwhile, Dani's twin sister, Darcy Odello, is a blind, snow white blonde, and cream-clad clairvoyant with psychometric powers. Psychometry, known as token-object reading, is a form of extrasensory perception that is able to glean psychic impressions from an object by making physical contact with it.

(Just FYI… the first time I ever heard of psychometry was in February 1988, while reading Uncanny X-Men, vol. 1, issue# 230.)

In the wake of Olin’s death, Ted visits Darcy at the shop she owns in the city of Cork. Called The Cabinet of Curiosities, it is a little hole-in-the-wall shop full of supernatural objects, many of them supposedly cursed. Ted is amused by all of the shop’s strange claims, but he doesn’t believe any of it. But, this is why he has paid her a visit. He has brought Olin's glass eye for Darcy’s collection, hoping that maybe they can both find some closure now that Olin is dead.

The two are civil, but clearly not very close, and they make vague noises at each other about possibly seeing one another again.

Several days later, Darcy arrives unexpectedly at Ted’s home. It’s the same old country manor Dani was murdered in, but now it has been fully renovated, and has been fixed up to look all fancy and modern and artsy. Ted lives there with his new girlfriend Yana, a pharmaceutical representative. Darcy arrives simultaneously with the shipment of a big crate that contains her housing warming gift.

A life-sized wooden golem.

How thoughtful of her...

The golem is terrifying. Its face is awash in agony, its mouth gapes open as if caught mid-scream. Darcy sets the unnerving thing at the dinner table, as though it will join them for a meal. Even worse, it seems to move whenever you look away. Yana is freaked out by the awful thing, and also by Darcy, who is blunt, disdainful, dismissive, and also somewhat unnerving. She wants Ted to get rid of them both.

Unfortunately, Ted is a very typical mediocre white guy wuss who simply can’t stand the idea that someone might not like him, so he puts a herculean amount of energy into avoiding uncomfortable confrontations. Sensing such a conflagration on the horizon, Ted practically dashes out the door, claiming he is going to be late for his night shift at the hospital. This leaves Yana alone with Darcy. Yana wants to leave too, but her car keys have disappeared. Even worse, she can’t help but notice that the big golem is inexplicably changing position even more frequently. At one point, the shock of this makes her drop her cell phone, destroying it.

“Do I look stupid?” Yana angrily says to Darcy at one point.

“I have no idea what you look like,” Darcy replies, “But you sound stupid.”

So, Yana is stuck there in an isolated country manor, with the twin sister of the woman who was murdered there a year ago, someone who clearly doesn’t like her, and who has brought with them the creepiest life-sized wooden doll ever, and has put it in the middle of her living room.

Yana soon discovers that the golem has several strange objects secreted away within holes in its head… photographs of Dani and Darcy, locks of hair, a tooth, a vial of blood. She touches these things because she isn't very bright. Eventually, in a panic, Yana retreats to her bedroom. But when Dani's apparition starts to appear in the house, Yana finally says "Nope!" and while leaving, she discovers that her car keys are somehow inside the crate that the golem was transported in.

She flees into the night.

Ted returns to the house the next day to find Darcy alone, waiting for him. Darcy accuses Ted of being responsible for Dani's murder.

Darcy reveals that she used the golem to kill Olin, in order to avenge her sister, Dani. But after Ted gave her Olin’s glass eye, she used her psychometric powers to read it, and discovered that Olin was innocent. She also discovered that it was Ted who arranged Dani's murder, enlisting a brutish orderly at the psychiatric hospital named Ivan, all so that Ted could have an alibi. He did it because he wanted Yana but he didn’t want to divorce Dani, fearing that Dani could’ve taken the house. Olin had overheard all of this at the hospital, and when he was released, he had tried to warn Dani.

No good deed, as they say...

Unfortunately, Ted isn’t just a conflict-avoidant wuss, he’s also a silver-tongued weasel. He manages to convince Darcy to let him contact the investigator in charge of the case, to prove that Darcy is mistaken, and through a convulsed bit of film-flamery, sets Darcy up so that her blindness leads to a fatal accident. Ted then sends Ivan the orderly to make sure Darcy is dead.

But Ivan finds the golem waiting for him...

Later, Yana has left Ted, and he is all alone in the house. Ivan survived, but Ted had him committed to the psychiatric hospital because of his rambling about the golem. To ensure Ivan doesn’t confess to Dani's murder, Ted arranges for Ivan’s death at the hands of a psychotic inmate.

But then there’s knock on the door, and Ted finds a small box. It’s from Darcy's oddities shop. Inside is an old-fashioned call bell that Darcy had show him on the day he gave her Olin’s glass eye, explaining at the time that it was haunted by the ghost of a bellhop who died in a local hotel, a spirit who now kills whoever rings it.

Scoffing, Ted rings the bell to prove to himself that Darcy’s whole supernatural world was just bullshit, just like he had always claimed. Looking around the room, he sees nothing, so he begins to relax, but he is unaware that the bellhop's horrific spirit is standing right behind him.

A very Tales From the Crypt kind of story that is part ghost story, part revenge story, part murder mystery, part supernatural horror, part home invasion thriller, and all featuring a wooden golem-like creature that redefines "unnerving," Oddity is a weird, creepy, and fun little film. It has a really good opening, some great tricks and surpirses, a lot of really good build-up, a very effective use of quickly glimpsed horror tropes, and a general and near-constant sense of menace that is so intense, but... it’s also a bit disappointing in how it's over all a little too sedate, with too little pay-off.

I mean, it’s nice knowing that Ted will get punished... but it kind of sucks that it happens off-screen, presumably.

Still, the shadows and corners and hallways and windows in that house are used very effectively. It’s really is very tense. And creepy. Plus, I love the idea of a shop of cursed objects, and then using those objects to gain revenge, and all while also being a really good lesson on why you shouldn’t just go around touching shit that doesn't belong to you and you don't know about. That’s great stuff. So are the make-up and special effects.

In the end, despite some stumbles, Oddity is an entertaining little horror film. It’s definitely worth checking out.