“Oddity” is a little but effective horror film which gradually reveals what it is about as patiently building up its creepy atmosphere and suspense along the story. While it is rather simple in terms of story and characters, the movie slowly unnerves us via a series of spooky moments to be appreciated, and it also shows a bit of morbid sense of humor at times.

The movie opens with a young woman working on the renovation a big old house located somewhere in a rural region of Ireland. Dani (Caroyln Braken) has to do the job alone by herself, and her psychiatrist husband Ted (Gwilym Lee) is mostly absent as being busy with doing his nighttime work at some mental hospital in a nearby city, but she has no problem with that as expecting to have a nice life with her husband in their house.

However, something quite unnerving happens to Dani at one night, and the movie quickly moves forward to one year later. We come to gather that she was brutally murdered, and it seems that one of Ted’s former patients, who suddenly came there during that time is the one responsible for her death, though he died not long after this horrible incident.

Anyway, Ted visits Dani’s visually impaired twin sister Darcy, who is also played by Carolyn Bracken. Darcy has run a little antique shop full of old odd things which are actually cursed according to her, and this may remind you of that spooky storage room often shown in “The Conjuring” (2013) and its several sequels. At the time of Ted’s visit, Darcy happens to be handling the latest addition to her rather creepy collection, and she willingly tells a bit about its sinister backstory, but Ted does not believe that much as a man of reason and science.

He also does not believe that Darcy is a sort of psychic capable of sensing the past or history from any personal object, though, as she requested, he brings her a personal object associated with that patient assumed to be the killer of his wife. As soon as Darcy touches that object in question, she instantly senses something quite disturbing, and she subsequently embarks on a little plan of hers.

Her plan is pretty simple. On one day which incidentally means a lot to her, Darcy suddenly comes to that big old house where Ted is living along with his current girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Both Ted and Yana are not so amused for good reasons, but Ted cannot say no when Darcy insists that she should stay in the house at least for a day, and Yana is left alone with her after Ted goes out for another nighttime work at his mental hospital.

The mood between Darcy and Yana is quite awkward to say the least, especially after when it turns out that Darcy sent something strange to the house right before arriving there. It is an old wooden golem belonging to her family, and this odd big object surely unnerves Yana, though she also cannot help but become more curious about what the hell it is as well as what Darcy is going to do with that.

Although Darcy does not say a lot about the real purpose of her visit, the atmosphere inside the house becomes creepier as the night begins, and Yana comes to feel more of something spooky lurking somewhere inside the house. While that wooden golem certainly looks all the more ominous than before, it seems more possible that Darcy and Yana are not alone inside the house, and we later get a little effective moment of shock involved with a digital camera once belonging to Dani.

The movie also adds some extra creepiness as occasionally paying attention to Ted’s workplace, which looks so drab and depressing that we are not so surprised by more darkness and madness shown later in the story. Nevertheless, Ted seems mostly unaffected by this grim and depressing work environment, though he gets disturbed a bit by a bunch of odd and disconcerting sketches drawn by one of his patients.

It goes without saying that the movie becomes creepier with more dread and tension during the last act, which expectedly reveals what Darcy is actually planning to do behind her back. While there surely come a few expected moments of shock and awe, the movie sticks to its slow but steady narrative pacing as before, and director/writer Damian McCarthy and his crew members including Cinematographer Colm Hogan did a good job of filling the screen with enough interest to engage us. As the camera usually sticks to static positions, we come to pay more attention to background details, and we become more aware of whatever is hovering around its heroine and a few other main characters in the story. In addition, Bracken’s solid dual performance ably holds the emotional center of the movie, and she is also supported well by several effective supporting performers including Gwilym Lee and Caroline Menton.

In conclusion, “Oddity” is interesting for its competent handling of mood and story, and McCarthy, who previously made a solid feature film debut with “Caveat” (2020), confirms to us here that he is a skillful filmmaker who knows how to interest and then engage us. At this point, he is already working on his next film, and I guess we can have some expectations on whatever he will show us next.