Film Review: Oddity

Love is blind. This sentiment rings truer than ever in Oddity, when a blind, psychically-inclined curio shop owner seeks to find out the truth about her sister's death.

Part paranormal, psychological horror film, part mystery, Oddity combines a lot of classic horror ideas like a spooky house, creepy doll and psychiatric hospital. On paper, it's a cliche enough combo to make you roll your eyes, on screen it makes you cover them and scream. Oddly enough, it works.

The movie sets its tone right from the start when it opens with Dani (Carolyn Bracken) alone, or so she thinks, in an old house when she's interrupted by a knock on the door. Through a peephole she has an unnerving conversation with an unsettling looking man who tells her she's in terrible danger and demands to be let in. Damian McCarthy keeps us here long enough to get lost in the panic before immediately transitioning to a whimsical title screen that gives us the chance to laugh off the stress of the scene–a pattern that continues throughout the film.

After such a suspenseful opening, the film fast forwards a year leaving us in the most horrific place for someone to be–void of closure, wishing for answers. Darcy, Dani's sister, has been living in this place for a while when she arrives at Dani's widowed husband's home with a strange wooden man and an ambition for answers. As the pieces fall together, we're reminded that the real monsters walk among us.

With eerie visuals and perfect pacing, Oddity succeeds in scares, even eliciting screams from viewers where the scare itself isn't actually happening. The dialogue felt a bit off at time, but given the tension you're placed in for the entirety of the film, the potentially accidental comic relief is welcome.