Hokum recently hit theaters, and it’s already outperforming box office expectations. If this Kubrick-referencing haunted hotel flick starring Adam Scott was your introduction to director Damian McCarthy, do yourself a favor and go watch his previous film, Oddity.
If you prefer to go in blind — the ideal way to watch any movie — Oddity is available to stream on Hoopla, Kanopy, Hulu, and Shudder.
Like Hokum, Oddity takes place in a sprawling Irish countryside location. They both traffic in similar kinds of scares — cursed objects, the occult, isolation, dark corners, and sketchy men living outside the norms of society. They also both embrace magic and the supernatural, while making the true evil seemingly respectable men who victimize the women in their lives.
Both were also made on extremely small budgets. Hokum cost just $5 million. Oddity’s budget has proven harder to confirm, but I’ve seen reports as low as $750,000. The result is a movie that’s gritty, extremely dark, and deploys its limited production budget smartly.
A good chunk of the money was clearly spent on the wooden golem that is the centerpiece of the film. It is… upsetting. Where most haunted items, monsters, or ghosts in horror movies lose their impact the more you look at them, the golem in Oddity remains disturbing and terrifying, no matter how long it’s on screen.
Its intricately carved wrinkles, mouth frozen in a permanent scream, and hollow eyes are the stuff of nightmares. And the fact that it sits there, unmoving for almost the entire film, only adds to the discomfort. You’re forced to stare at it for a significant chunk of the 98-minute runtime, waiting for it to do something, anything. But mostly it just looks straight ahead, daring you to let down your guard for even a single second.
McCarthy proves expert at building tension and atmosphere. While there are quite a few jump scares in Oddity, they never feel cheap or gratuitous. It manages to lull you into a false sense of security almost every time, teasing that a scare might come, but only delivering it when you least expect it. Even on rewatch, even when I know exactly what is going to happen and when, several still make me flinch.
At its core, this is a revenge film. But one with quite a few twists and turns. It follows Darcy Odello, a blind psychic seeking vengeance on those responsible for her twin sister Dani’s murder. What Darcy has uncovered is that the man accused of the murder is innocent, and that Ted’s (Dani’s widower) relationship with his new girlfriend, Yana, might not be so fresh after all.
While the wooden horror that Darcy brings to Ted’s home and sits at his dining room table is the main scare, it’s not the only one. Along the way, Dani’s ghost makes repeated appearances, a cannibal feasts on a foot, oh, and it’s impossible to get any cell reception.
It’s a remarkably efficient film that barely gives you a chance to breathe.