Oddity is masterfully tense horror from the director of Hokum
Hokum was recently released in theaters and is already exceeding box office expectations. If this Kubrick-referencing haunted hotel movie starring Adam Scott was your introduction to director Damian McCarthy, do yourself a favor and go see his previous film, Singularity.
If you prefer to go in blind – the perfect way to watch any movie – Singularity is available to stream on Hoopla, Kanopy, Hulu and Shudder.
As Hokum, Singularity takes place in a vast Irish countryside. They both traffic in similar types of scares: cursed objects, the occult, isolation, dark corners, and sketchy men living outside of society’s norms. They also both embrace magic and the supernatural, while making real evil out of seemingly respectable men who victimize the women in their lives.
Both were also made on extremely low budgets. Hokum only cost $5 million. The weirdness The budget proved harder to confirm, but I’ve seen reports as low as $750,000. The result is a realistic, extremely dark film that deploys its limited production budget intelligently.
A lot of money was clearly spent on the wooden golem that is the centerpiece of the film. It’s… upsetting. Where most haunted objects, monsters, or ghosts in horror films lose their impact the more you watch them, Oddity’s golem remains disturbing and terrifying no matter how long he’s on screen.
His finely sculpted wrinkles, his mouth frozen in a permanent scream and his hollow eyes are the stuff of nightmares. And the fact that he stands there motionless for almost the entire film only adds to the discomfort. You’re forced to watch him for much of the 98-minute runtime, waiting for him to do something, anything. But most of the time, he stares straight ahead, daring you to let your guard down for even a second.
McCarthy proves himself an expert in the art of creating tension and atmosphere. Although there are quite a few scares in Singularitythey never feel cheap or free. It manages to lull you into a false sense of security almost every time, hinting that a scare might be coming, but only delivering it when you least expect it. Even rewatching, even when I know exactly what is going to happen and when, many still make me shudder.
At its core, this is a revenge film. But with quite a few twists and turns. It follows Darcy Odello, a blind psychic seeking revenge on those responsible for the murder of his twin sister Dani. What Darcy discovered is that the man accused of the murder is innocent and that Ted’s (Dani’s widower) relationship with his new girlfriend, Yana, may not be so fresh after all.
Although the wooden horror that Darcy brings to Ted’s house 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 leaves you time to breathe.
