Producers: Laura Tunstall, Katie Holly, Evan Horan and Mette-Marie Kongsved   Director: Damian McCarthy   Screenplay: Damian McCarthy   Cast: Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Jonathan French, Steve Wall and Joe Rooney   Distributor: Shudder

Grade: B

If one considers Damian McCarthy’s second feature simply as a murder mystery—which is what, in the end, it is—one would be hard pressed to give it a passing grade.  The culprit is obvious virtually from the start; when the modus operandi is revealed, it’s not terribly clever; and when the killing is finally shown, it’s carried out with an illogical flourish. 

But “Oddity” isn’t merely a murder mystery.  It’s one loaded with supernatural elements and presented in bold, if pretentious, cinematic style.  And while those elements don’t alter the thinness of the mystery, their addition makes the film an example of a commonplace plot carried off with such over-the-top weirdness and well-chosen chronological shifts that it becomes perversely fascinating.

The film opens with Dani Timmis (Carolyn Bracken) busily working at renovating the cavernous, isolated stone house she and her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), a doctor at a nearby psychiatric facility, are moving into.  She stays there at night while he completes his shift at work, using a tent thrown up in the middle of an otherwise empty room. She’s also set up a time-lapse camera to capture any ghostly images haunting the place.

Her solitude is rudely interrupted when Olin Boole (Tadhg Murphy) shows up at the door.  Recently released from the asylum, he claims that he’d seen someone slipping into the house while Dani left the door ajar and went out to her car, but she refuses to let him in to search the place.  So he leaves, and she’s killed—in a horrifying, bloody fashion, as will eventually be revealed.  It’s assumed that Boole is the culprit, and shortly afterward he’s murdered horribly in his halfway house; another resident, Declan Barrett (Jonathan French), finds the body and pockets the dead man’s glass eye.

The story jumps ahead a year, when Ted visits the curiosities shop run by Dani’s twin sister Darcy (Bracken again), a recent brain cancer survivor who’s blind.  Her place is filled with oddities that she claims are cursed, like a hotel call bell that she alleges will summon the malevolent spirit of a dead bellboy if rung.  Ted has brought Boole’s false eye, found among Barrett’s effects when he recently died, to Darcy, who believes she can read a dead person’s thoughts by touching such an intimate object; Ted, a complete rationalist, scoffs at her ideas.  He also surprises her by revealing that he has a new girlfriend living with him in the now-renovated house—Yana (Caroline Menton), a pharmaceutical representative who helped him through his grief.

A week later Darcy shows up at the house on the anniversary of her sister’s death.  She’s sent ahead a trunk containing a bizarre gift for the couple, a full-sized wooden man, its face contorted in a scream and with holes in its head containing tokens—photographs, a vial of blood; and she brings that hotel bell with her.  Yana is far from welcoming, but Ted nonetheless leaves the women together while he goes to work.  There he plays chess with sadistic orderly Ivan (Steve Wall), who’d berated Boole during his stay.

What follows is an exhibition of Darcy’s psychic powers and of the mystic nature of the artifacts she’s brought into the house—along with a revelations about the deaths of both Dani and Boole.  McCarthy’s script is so tightly constructed and his direction so meticulous that, so long as one’s willing to go along with the paranormal elements, everything gradually falls into place; and the final sequence is a doozy, ending with a shot that will probably make you jump with a gasp followed by a nervous laugh.  The intensely sinister vibe is aided by Lauren Kelly’s atmospheric production design, Colm Hogan’s precisely composed cinematography, Brian Philip Davis’ unhurried editing, and Richard G. Mitchell’s ominous score.  Costume designer Suzanne Keogh’s work is another strong factor, with one outfit in particular providing a sudden fright; and that wooden man is truly eerie.

With a few exceptions—Bracken’s Dani, Menton’s Yana, the performances could hardly be described as naturalistic; most of the acting is in italics, as it were, adding to the overall feeling of strangeness.  But everyone is clearly on McCarthy’s wavelength, and Bracken’s Darcy and Lee’s Ted are especially effective.

There’s a strong element of cabin fever in “Oddity,” a hothouse claustrophobia that’s deliberately oppressive, and the slow pacing can try one’s patience.  But by relying more on understated suggestion than explicit gore, the film, while more than a little affected, is arresting and genuinely unsettling.