Oddity review – deft Irish horror gets great value from ventriloquist’s dummy

A strong cast and a spooky mannequin deliver heavy gothic frisson as a blind woman investigates her sister’s unnatural deathThis deft Irish supernatural horror-cum-clairvoyant detective story delivers heavy frisson with minimal means: little more than the creepy recesses of a Grand Designs-style fixer-upper, a lifesize ventriloquist’s dummy howling to the furies, and some stringent performances. Also featuring occasional cutaways to a psychiatric hospital, it pays fealty to the gothic tradition, but is reminiscent of J-horror too in its antsy focus on an atmosphere of liminality that threatens to coalesce into something malevolent.Squatting inside the country pile she is renovating with her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), who runs the local mental asylum, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is confronted with one of his patients at her door one night. Despite his glass eye, the man claims to have spotted a shady interloper slip into the house behind her – and demands to be let in. A year later, it turns out Dani was bludgeoned to death, leaving her blind twin sister Darcy (Bracken again) wanting to know more. So she invites herself to the same house Ted now shares with his new girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton) – but not before sending them a trunk containing a gift from her curiosity shop: the aforementioned mannequin from hell. Continue reading...