The Babble Bruh Reviews

An Exercise on Trust, and If and When It Should Be Applied to the Homeless. Welcome to My TED Talk.

As someone who’s never made a movie, I can only imagine how impossibly hard it is to create a genuinely suspenseful moment on screen. In today’s horror genre, it’s almost a given that every scary movie will have at least one scene where the soundtrack creeps into pure silence, the point of view focuses on something close up, and some poorly written anticipation builds until you get absolutely ear-blasted with a cheesy jump-scare noise. It’s lazy and so overused that when watching these scenes in a group setting, you can literally feel the collective butthole clench in anticipation of whatever loud noise the editor chose to hurt you with. So, when a movie does something cool and is able to freak you out without using these boring methods, I think it should be talked about. Case in point: the movie Oddity.

The movie starts with a classic opening: a well-off white couple has just bought an extremely dumb and totally haunted-looking mansion that’s completely isolated in the middle of the woods. The wife is on the phone, unpacking, while her rich doctor husband tells her he’ll be working late at the insane asylum and won’t be able to make it home tonight. Yadda yadda, we know where this is going—she’s about to get her butt eaten by a ghost or some paranormal shit. Anyway, we get to nighttime, and the wife is grabbing something from her car when she hears a noise behind her. When she turns around, all she sees is the open door to her house and the pitch-black woods surrounding it. Nervously, she runs inside, slams the door, and immediately hears a panicked knock from outside.

It’s a man, begging her to open the door. Not just any man, but a rough, homeless-looking guy with a golden fake eye. He’s banging on the door, screaming, “I saw a man sneak into your house! You’re in danger! Please open the door!” over and over, frantically.

The scene successfully conveys a sense of “Oh shit.” Outside, the homeless man isn’t underselling it; he sounds genuinely concerned, and our wife character is standing in a very dark, very empty house with no phone, no weapons, and no husband to save the day. The camera spins between the door and the dark house; the “Shit’s about to go down” clock is ticking rapidly, and a decision needs to be made now. So, what would you do? Do you open the door and risk the homeless man potentially killing you? Do you not open the door and risk the mystery intruder killing you? Or do you collapse under the pressure and shit yourself in fear? It’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself because what the main character chooses to do leads into a whole movie that’s really good.

This is an example of great horror intensity that I love and wish more “larger” budget movies would explore. When done right, and the viewer feels as scared as the character on screen, it’s a moment of magic. The rest of the movie, thankfully, has more moments of this kind of sorcery, and if the opening hook has you even slightly interested, I highly recommend watching it. For spoiler reasons, I won’t go into more of the plot, because that would ruin the fun and mystery of the hook. It’s not “ruin your dreams and life” levels of horror, but it has a very well-thought-out story that kept me guessing where it would go multiple times. Oddity earns 7 panicked knocks out of 10 on the good movie scale.

Thanks for reading this little blurb, and I hope it got you interested in this cool movie. If you watch it, I hope you enjoy it!