31 Days of Halloween: Revenge Night: Damian McCarthy’s Chilling New Revenge Horror, Oddity

 Oddity - Damian McCarthy - 2024

★★★★-Oddity. A film that definitively answers the question of what happens when you put Hannibal Lector in a room with a with delicious looking toes. Day 3 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Revenge night. I thought it was better than good but sort of forgettable. I’m a sucker for a cursed object horror flick. This one features a golem type monster that is truly horrific looking. Made of wood instead of clay. Basically, your run-of-the-mill cheap thrill on Shudder, except really well done. 

 
Gist is Ted, a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, is dealing with the mysterious death of his wife Dani. She dies alone in their new country house at the hands of one of his patients. One day her twin sister Darcy shows up at the house, where Ted now lives with new fiancé Yana, with an extremely unsettling haunted wooden mannequin​. 
 
The victim’s sister gives this thing to them as a gift. The couple is sort of like, uh, thanks. When the new gal starts poking around and finds something in the golem’s mouth. The former sister in-law freaks, shrieking at her to “put it back.” Um, excuse me, but you gave me this creepy shit. 
 
Directed by Damian McCarthy. Only his second film. His previous flick, Caveat, is in this same lane, and is also effectively terrifying. He’s got a solid style. I’ll definitely watch his films going forward. 
 
Stars Gwilym Lee as the husband doing some Chekov's bell shit. He's something of a poor man's Joseph Fiennes. Only thing I’ve seen him in is the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. He played legendary guitarist/cool guy Brian May. Star from Caveat Jonathan French shows up as a psychopath. Never seen any of the other actors, but they are all fantastic, as are their characters. One Carolyn Bracken plays both the sisters. She wins the movie. New fiancé Yana is played by Caroline Menton. Guy named Tadhg Murphy plays the googly eyed mental patient. 
 
Interesting supernatural elements and lots of psychological tension. The mannequin really gets under your skin as it sits there, looking absolutely terrifying. You know some shit is going to go down with that thing. Movie gets pretty chilling in that sense. I actually let out a little scream at one point. But it veers back into cliché nonsense with a twist you see coming a mile away. It’s still fucked up and disturbing. A very good film, but not quite an instant classic. But close. 

V/H/S 99 - Flying Lotus, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, Johannes Roberts, Joseph Winter, Vanessa Winter - 2022

★★ - Little behind here posting my watches. Counted this for the new release for the Nightmare on Film Street Halloween challenge. 

Got to see the new anthology flick V/H/S 99 a little early at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival last week. Some of the segments were better than others, but the last one, “To Hell and Back” was great. Overall, not great. 

Shudder put the film fest on and I got to see some of those like-minded horror teevee machine people milling about. Even saw Shudder curator Sam Zimmerman, who I know is not someone most people are going to geek out over but he impresses me.

Dead Man’s Shoes - Shane Meadows - 2004

★★★★★ - Revenge flick. Not quite horror, but it is horrific. Great, great film. Super fucked up.

David Fincher/Christopher Nolan-esque. Black and white when in the past. Mind-blowing twists. Definite influences.

Pretty ingenious. Guy escalates his “pranks” on a group of assholes as we see what they did to his handicapped brother. As that stuff gets more fucked up so does his revenge plot.

There is a scene where they go to this woman’s house who they forced to have sex with the handicapped kid where all of them are in this tiny car. We’re talking six dudes in a smart car type of shit. A literal clown car pretty much. They are the type of guys that when having someone come at them, they choose to drink their ass’s off and do cocaine and weed to prep. I might want to be clearheaded in that situation, but what do I know. 

Gets progressively way more fucked up as the movie goes on. Illustrates that revenge fantasies aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. Though I am an atheist, I’ll say this guy NEEDS Jesus. I don’t have that in me, I don’t think. “I am the monster.“ Maybe if I was in a situation like that but who knows. Warning, this is not an easy watch. I cannot stress this enough. Incredible film though.