My husband and I had agreed to review Graduation Day today, but even though I have enjoyed that movie many times in the past, I realized I couldn’t really think of anything to say about it this go-round. So he told me I should just write about Oddity, which we watched immediately after.

Oddity is extremely unnerving. I can’t shake the feeling of it 12 hours after watching. There are the ever-present jump scares, and it’s slow, but it’s a very satisfying watch. And there are ghosts! I highly recommend this haunted house/haunted object/revenge movie.

Synopsis: One year after his wife is murdered by (allegedly) a patient at the mental hospital where he works, a psychiatrist stops by the antique shop of her blind psychic twin sister to deliver the alleged killer’s glass eye. Yep. The blind twin (same actress as the murdered wife but with a completely different demeanor and hairstyle) can read objects and she now knows the killer wasn’t the killer. She also tells her brother-in-law a story about a bellhop who haunts a bell from the hotel where he works. Later she shows up at the home where her BIL now lives with his new girlfriend, the same place where her sister was murdered. And she doesn’t show up alone, because she brings a crate with a life-sized wooden mannequin that somehow gets out of the crate and sits at the table. And that’s not all!

You will know whodunit here pretty early because you’ve seen a movie before, and it’s pretty obvious why, but you won’t know how, and you might not guess what the revenge will be, but you will like it.

I could go on and on about every detail of Oddity but it’s such a new movie (2024 in fact) that I just want you to go watch it. I will say just three things: I watched this because I found out it starred Gwilym Lee who was one of the sergeants on Midsomer Murders, and he couldn’t be more different here as the doctor. People kind of get typecast on police shows, but wow, not this guy. He brings to mind Vincent Price with a dead wife creeping around a castle, only it’s a dark half-renovated barn in Ireland.

Secondly, the film makes a huge plot point of telling us that people stay attached to objects, but I just realized this morning that the murdered wife’s ghost is connected to her camera. When the new girlfriend finds the camera that the previous lady of the house had been using to document possible ghosts as well as the process of renovation in the old barn, and looks at the pictures on the SD card, that’s when the wife’s ghost shows up and tells the girlfriend to leave.

Finally, when said girlfriend takes the wife’s warning from the beyond the grave and leaves, she eventually leaves a voicemail for her now-ex boyfriend that I think could benefit many characters in many horror films. She essentially tells him off for being so weird as to live in a house where multiple people have been murdered. She also says she’s never coming back and to never call her again. Not coincidentally, she seems to survive past the end of the movie!

OK, so what have we learned? Some actors can make the jump from daytime TV to midnight movies. Old dark houses are often creepy for a reason. If a ghost tells you to get out, get the hell out! If you think someone is plotting to commit a murder, probably don’t go to their house to warn the victim instead of just calling the cops. If you can’t see and you’re trying to catch a killer, probably don’t walk across a high walkway following exactly the path the killer tells you to walk. You can’t hide from a killer inside a tent, or from anyone for that matter. Most importantly, if someone asks you to help them commit a murder, they’re probably going to kill you too.

You can see Oddity on Shudder and AMC+, and in some of your worse dreams.