"Oddity" opens strong. Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in an old stone country

"Caveat," Damian Mc Carthy’s directorial debut, was unnerving in the extreme. So, too, is his follow-up, "Oddity". "Oddity" is, if anything, even more unsettling. In "Caveat," Mc Carthy created a creeping sense of dread and outright terror, sometimes from merely pointing the camera at a slightly ajar door. Mc Carthy has patience as a filmmaker. He can wait. He doesn't try to overwhelm with easy jump-scares. He allows the sense of uneasiness to build and build. Both “Caveat” and “Oddity" share a fascination with potentially supernatural objects, maybe cursed, but also maybe sentient. In "Caveat," it's a toy rabbit with alarming angry glass eyes. In "Oddity," it's a life-size wooden man. There's something weird about these objects. They loom large in Mc Carthy's imagination.

"Oddity" opens strong. Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in an old stone country house, far from civilization. There's a loud knock on the door one night. She opens the peephole and a man (Tadhg Murphy) with a wild glare peers through. He has one glass eye. He tells her, urgently, he saw someone enter the house and she is in terrible danger. Dani is, naturally, suspicious of this scary-looking man, and she is hesitant to believe him. It could be a trap. She did hear creaking noises upstairs, though. Maybe he's right? But does she really want to walk outside with this stranger?