ODDITY (2024) (Acorn Media International Blu-ray Review)

ODDITY (2024) 

Label: Acorn Media International

Region Code: A,B

Rating: 15 Cert 

Duration: 97 Minutes 29 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Damian McCarthy

Cast: Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Le, Johnny French, Caroline Menton

The eerie Oddity (2024) opens with Dani (Carolyn Bracken, The Gone) alone at country home that she and her psychiatric doctor husband Ted (Gwilym Lee, Bohemian Rhapsody) are renovating, a place with very poor phone reception 'natch. As night sets in she phones and checks in with her husband and her sister Darcy from the seemingly only spit in the house capable of reception, a second floor corner, and then settles in for the night. That's when she receives a  knock at the door. Answering through a security peep hole a man with a glass eye appears, his name is Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy, The Northman), and tells her that she is in danger, that he saw a man enter her home, and she needs to get out. The encounter is alarming, and the idea of a strange man watching let alone the threat of a potential home invader is unsettling. Dani decides to err on the side of caution and to stay inside behind the locked door, refusing entry to the man, while he says says he understands her hesitancy, and that he walk into town and alert the authorities. The timeline then jumps ahead about a year later, we learn that Dani was found murdered after the encounter, and that Boole, who turned out to be a recently released patient of her husband's, is the suspected culprit. He himself having been mysteriously murdered at a halfway house not long after. 

At that point we meet Dani’s blind twin sister Darcy (Bracken, again), still grieving for her sister. She runs a cursed-object curio shop she inherited from her mother, and is a self-proclaimed psychometrists, someone who can get a psychic impression of a person based on her contact with a physical object they owned. At her shop she is visited by Dani's widow Ted who gifts her something quite strange, the glass eye of Boole, which was discovered with the belongings of a recently deceased patient Declan (Jonathan French, Caveat), who was a witness tot he murder. While he is a non-believer when it comes to parapsychology and the supernatural he says he knew it was important for her to have, to perhaps give her a sense of closure. He also notes, much to Daarcy's dismay, that he has a new girlfriend named Yana (Caroline Menton, TVs All Creatures Great and Small), a pharmaceutical sales rep he met at the hospital. 

The next day, after having read the object Ted gifted her, Darcy pays an unexpected visit to Ted at the house where her sister was murdered, and where Ted now lives. Her arrival is preceded by the delivery of a mysterious wooden crate she has sent in advance. The unplanned visit seems unwelcome, with Ted un comfortably excusing himself saying he needs to get to work, leaving his girlfriend Yana alone with Darcy, who insists on spending the night, making Yana quite uncomfortable. Yana tries to go lave to stay the night at her apartment, already nervous about being alone in  the house where Ted's wife was murdered, but she seems to have misplaced her key, forcing her to spend time with Darcy. 

It turns out Darcy in not convinced that it was Boole who killed her sister, and she is determined to prove who the true killer, or killers, are using her ability to psychically read physical objects. She also reveals the contents of the wooden crate, an unsettling life-sized, hand-carved wooden mannequin made by her father as a fifth wedding anniversary gift to her mother, which she has unpacked and set at the dining room table, giving  Yana quite a startle. As the night wears on Darcy and Yana engage in some rather pointed and bitchy conversation, and through psychic impressions we see in flashback what transpired that night of the knock at the door, with Darcy dead-set on avenging her twin's murder and exposing and punishing the guilty parties, with the help of her creepy wooden mannequin. 

This is such a dread-fueled creepfest, from the opening scene with it's intense stranger-at-the-door scenario I was hooked. The atmosphere is masterful, there's a palpable sense of dread, and the psychic-detective elements of it was quite intriguing. There's a familiar Golem element to it as well with the wooden mannequin, which is present for the last half of the film, but it just sort of sits at the table with it's creepy wooden mouth open in what looks like an eternal scream. It just sits there for most of the film, but at certain points it appears to have moved ever so slightly. The psychological elements of it all are also keenly edged and well-executed, with a few well-placed and well-earned jump scares that certainly sent a surge of fright through me as the slow-build tension kept ratcheting up, building to a crescendo and spooky coda that left me slack-jawed with just how well executed this old fashioned fright flick was pulled off. The look of the wood carved mannequin adds an elements of folk horror to the processing, atop the psychological tension and the supernatural psychic detective story, it really kept things fresh, not knowing exactly how it was all going to pan out. Even though I thought I had it pegged early on it, and I was correct about a lot of where I thought this was going, it did it in such an interesting and well-executed way, with a superb cast, that it defied by expectations with nice little touches that I did not see coming, giving be goosebumps throughout, making this easily one of my favorite new flicks of 2024. 

Audio/Video: Oddity (2024) arrives on Blu-ray from Acorn Media International in 1080p HD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. The digital shot film looks terrific, plenty of mostly dreary, natural looking colors. We get warm wood and cool stone interiors, dismal exteriors, and inky shadows, and an occasional burst of colors like doomed Dani's indoor tent set-up with a warm yellow permeating the underlit interior. I found the shadow detail is slightly lacking at times during the darkest scenes, but overall a solid HD presentation with a well-authored disc without any compression issues. Audio come by way of English DTS-HD MA 51 with optional English subtitles. The track is clean and well-balanced, dialogue is nicely prioritized, and the creepy score by Richard G. Mitchell (Caveat) hits nicely, as do tasty needle drops by Irish folk band Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies, and R&B staple Little Willie John. 

Extras include a 5-min Behind-the-Scenes with Cast and Crew, featuring interviews with director Damian McCarthy, actors Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Le, and Caroline Menton, plus costume designer Suzanne Keogh, and production designer Lauren Kelly. 3-min Storyboard to Screen Featurette; and the 29-min The Making of Wooden Mannequin Gallery featuring a very detailed behind-the-scenes look at the wooden mannequins sculpting, design and painting. The single-disc release arrives in an oversized keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. 

Special Features:
- Behind-the-Scenes with Cast and Crew (4:40)
- Storyboard to Screen Featurette (3:16) 
- The Making of Wooden Manequin Gallery (38:35)

Screenshots from the Acorn Media International Blu-ray: