Damian Mc Carthy’s chilling ghost story, Oddity, was a breakout horror hit this summer. The film follows Darcy, an Irish woman who visits the rural home where her twin sister was killed a year ago — and where her sister’s former husband still resides, now with his new girlfriend.
Darcy has psychic abilities and is able to read objects, a helpful skill in her line of work as an antiques dealer who mainly sells cursed objects. When she brings a giant, wooden mannequin to the home as a gift, the secrets of the family begin to emerge.
MovieMaker Magazine sat down with Mc Carthy to talk about why audiences are primed for occult horror stories, how growing up in a video rental store made him fall in love with horror, and where his love for horror might take him next.
“I suppose it’s just about the unknown,” Mc Carthy said, when asked about why occult imagery is so appealing to audiences and filmmakers. “I guess it is a trend at the moment. We’ve become so reliant on technology, and communication through technology. We have information right at our fingertips. But the occult is a very secret, unknown evil. From a filmmaking point of view, the occult gives you a creative license to make up what you want. You don’t have to follow too many rules with it.”
Though Oddity is only Mc Carthy’s second feature, he has a number of shorts still available on a YouTube channel — many of them filmed over ten years ago.
“I’m terrible at social media,” Mc Carthy laughs. “I only ever set it up just as a place to keep everything together. I’m very happy to hear that people are finding these old things and going back to watch them.”
These shorts, and his previous feature Caveat, often feature strange or outright haunted objects.
“I think I just always like the idea that maybe your home isn’t haunted, but something you’ve picked up along the way and brought into your home, that thing is cursed or haunted.” Mc Carthy explains.
“Fear usually comes from the unknown. So you have the physical object as the source of the drama or the horror. But the mystery behind it offers a spiritual side. What’s latched onto this thing that we’ve brought inside our home?”
Damian Mc Carthy on What He Doesn’t Show in Oddity
The tangled mysteries of Oddity is just one of the many appealing things about the film: from the cold opening, where Dani gets a knock at the door from a stranger who claims he saw someone break into her home, we’re not sure who we can trust. The film carefully draws out a crackling mystery, making judicious use of jumpscares.
“I’m way more interested in how long you can build suspense and put the audience on edge.” Mc Carthy says. “I want to try to evoke the nervous laughter when they know something’s going to happen. That’s where all the work should be in a horror film, as opposed to just a random jumpscare that doesn’t feel earned.”
His sense of restraint is also evident in the film’s lack of on-screen violence: in a genre rife with dehumanizing imagery of violence against women, Mc Carthy deliberately avoids certain moments.
“The film doesn’t take itself too seriously. I mean, it is about a wooden man,” Mc Carthy says, laughing. “There’s a bit of dark comedy in it. If it took itself too seriously, if it showed all the violence, it’d just become an unintentional comedy. And I just have no interest in showing it. It would make the film less entertaining, and I think it would immediately lose the audience.”
It’s that balance of comedy, suspense, and horror that makes Oddity truly frightening, alongside a healthy heaping of uncertainty. Pervasive doubt is a recurring theme in Mc Carthy’s work. In Oddity, we’re not certain if the spiritual world Darcy claims to be attuned to is even real. What if the wooden man is just a wooden man? What is it about doubt that Mc Carthy is so attracted to?
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“I’ve always been terrified of the idea of losing one’s mind.” Mc Carthy says. “If you’re alone in situations, and you’re seeing this very strange, supernatural, terrifying thing, there’s no one to ask for a second opinion.
“All of the characters in the film are doubting — they believe something, but it’s being questioned, and they’re not sure if it’s true. I think there’s a lot of relatable horror in that, in the fear of not trusting oneself and not being able to say, ‘I believe this. This is what happened.’”
It’s unsurprising that he wrote Oddity during the pandemic. Though it’s not a direct influence, McCarthy mentions how many recent films deal with family secrets.
“I wonder if those were written during the pandemic where people were stuck inside their family, and asking, what if the threat is already inside?”
It’s obvious from watching any of Mc Carthy’s work — or from talking to him for half a minute — that he’s no newcomer to the horror genre. Growing up in his parents’ video rental store gave him access to a world of movies across genres, but horror was always special. When asked about creating work outside of the horror genre, Mc Carthy expresses subdued interest.
“You can probably think of ten examples that prove me wrong, but there are so many horror filmmakers whose first films are good and then start to fall away. Maybe there’s something about the genre that makes it belong to newer filmmakers.”
And Mc Carthy loves seeing indie horror directors take on ambitious new projects, and mentions Fede Álvarez’s new entry in the Alien series, Alien: Romulus. “That’s a big budget movie but he’s such a good horror filmmaker.”
“And you can look at Peter Jackson.” Mc Carthy continues, referencing Jackson’s early auteur horror films like Bad Taste or The Frighteners. “There’s some very creepy and unsettling things in Lord of the Rings. He’s got the best jump scare ever in Bilbo Baggins when he sees the ring.”
But fear not, horror fans. Mc Carthy is at work on a few more horror films and planning on shooting his next feature at the end of this year. “The next few I have planned are all very much horror movies. There’s other stuff I’d like to make, but I know my love for horror would never go away. It’ll always be there.”
Oddity is now available on video on demand.
Main image: Oddity, courtesy of Wildcard Distribution.