Oddity delivers – Hokum director Damian McCarthy returns with Oddity, a grim Irish countryside haunted-house revenge tale starring Adam Scott. The film leans hard on occult dread, an unsettling wooden golem, and a plot built from twists—while stretching its limited budget into
A dark farmhouse in the Irish countryside is only the beginning of what Damian McCarthy is pulling off in Oddity. The director, coming off Hokum, delivers another horror built to keep you staring—at what’s in the room, at what might happen next, and at how long you’re forced to wait.
Oddity also made the jump from theaters to streaming fast.. It’s available on Hoopla. Kanopy. Hulu. and Shudder. making it easy to watch in the “go in blind” spirit the film seems to reward.. Like Hokum. it revolves around cursed objects. the occult. isolation. and sketchy men who live outside society’s norms—while the supernatural is treated as something both present and usable.. Both films even share a similar strain of menace: the true evil arrives wrapped in something respectable. especially when it targets women close to them.
On the production side, both movies are defined by small budgets.. Hokum cost $5 million.. Oddity’s budget is harder to pin down, but reports seen as low as $750,000 have floated around.. Whatever the exact number ends up being. the movie’s grittiness and darkness feel deliberate. and the money it does spend goes where it counts.
A major chunk clearly lands on the wooden golem that anchors Oddity.. It’s upsetting in a way that doesn’t fade as the film rolls on.. The golem’s intricately carved wrinkles. mouth frozen in a permanent scream. and hollow eyes are described as the stuff of nightmares—and. crucially. the figure sits there unmoving for almost the entire film.. That stillness keeps the discomfort from wearing off: you’re asked to stare at it for a significant chunk of the 98-minute runtime. waiting for it to do something. anything. even though mostly it just looks straight ahead. daring you to stop guarding your reaction.
McCarthy also builds tension and atmosphere with precision.. Jump scares show up, but they don’t land as cheap or random.. Instead. the film repeatedly lulls you into a false sense of safety. teasing that a scare might come. only to deliver it when you least expect it.. Even on rewatch—when the timing and what’s coming are already known—multiple moments still cause a flinch.
At the story’s core, Oddity plays like a revenge film, but not a straightforward one.. It follows Darcy Odello, a blind psychic seeking vengeance for the murder of her twin sister, Dani.. What Darcy uncovers is that the man accused of the murder is innocent. and that Ted’s relationship with his new girlfriend. Yana. might not be as new as it looks.
Beyond the wooden golem—though it remains the main scare—there are other disruptions in the house and around the characters. Dani’s ghost appears repeatedly. A cannibal feasts on a foot. And it’s impossible to get any cell reception.
The pattern running through the film is tight: limited budgets are paired with a small number of standout threats—cursed objects, isolation, and the golem that stays in place for much of the runtime—while jump scares arrive only after the movie deliberately sets you up to relax.
Oddity, like Hokum, keeps that pressure constant without giving much room to breathe. It’s described as remarkably efficient, built to keep you tense from one beat to the next, even as its revenge plot continues to twist and turn.
Oddity Damian McCarthy Hokum Adam Scott horror film Irish countryside wooden golem revenge horror occult cursed objects streaming Hoopla Kanopy Hulu Shudder jump scares Dani Odello Darcy Odello