I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Folk Horror may be largely associated with the British but for the past 10 years or so nobody, nobody, has the genre. More perfected and cornered in the most interesting manners than the Irish. If you see a folk horror film pop up somewhere and it Irish..:watch it. Banging left and right. 

I wanted to watch Caveat but never did and after the high praise Oddity got I really wanted to fill in that gap. But surprisingly my wife heard of this film from somewhere and brought it up. So I stopped my dumb brain and watched it (she sadly fell asleep after 15 minutes from a day of painting and building and all manners of exhausting stuff) and yeah, wow, this is so good. I get the praise. 

Didn’t land for me as highly but I have no complaints. 

It’s posited as a mystery horror and I don’t feel that’s entirely accurate. The lead, the psycho twin sister of a woman brutally murdered, already knows everything. There’s no mystery. We don’t know and the information carefully laid out over the film but it’s also not very hard to guess the whole picture after a couple reveals. So what Oddity in turn provides is this intensely atmosphere dread maker. The fuck is with that giant wooden doll? How will that turn propel the film forward? How will this end satisfactorily? There’s anticipation over a story whose details we easily understand because it is very carefully plotted. It’s a very quiet film and the dreadful atmosphere is made more impressive to me by how visually clean and attractive the film is. It’s not murky or scummy or any visual manner that is in itself atmosphere. It’s clean, pretty straightforward with its cinematography and visuals, but the slow pace, sound design, and subtle score do all the heavy lifting and it’s super effective. 

The acting is sufficient in relating the purpose of these characters though not profoundly affecting. The film also never really goes for cheap scares. Some could argue if they are jumps or not but they aren’t cheap low hanging fruit scares. It’s just engrossing. It’s moody, it’s creepy and it’s good. Really enjoyed this and look forward to checking out Caveat and the director’s shorts (on YouTube).