Oddity, or, Golem-in-Law

I watched Oddity in preparation for Damian Mc Carthy’s new movie out this weekend, Hokum.1 I didn’t know anything about it apart from its extremely effective marketing, which suggests intense “elevated horror” in an old manor house, featuring a severe white-haired woman and an unnerving and grotesque, life-sized wooden figure. And it delivers on that! If that sounds like your thing and you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend seeing it without reading on. What surprised me the most about Oddity was that it delivers on being genuinely chilling, but also manages to be drily funny throughout. Fully aware of the absurdity of the things it keeps tossing into the story, but never mocking or undermining them. As a result, over the course of just a little over an hour and a half, it transforms from supernatural horror that’s scary as hell, into a fun and twisty episode of Tales from the Crypt. All the while keeping its edge and without descending into camp. It starts with a woman alone in…