Tag Archives: Carolyn Bracken

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Little Sister, Can’t You Find Another Way?

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Oddity

by Hope Madden

Back in 2021, writer/director Damian Mc Carthy cast a spook house spell, rattling chains and all, with his pithy survival story Caveat.  He’s back, and with him another claustrophobic but gorgeous supernatural tale of familial grievance.

Carolyn Bracken is Darcy, twin sister of the recently slain Dani (also Bracken). Darcy is a little touched—she still runs the curiosity/antique shop her mother left her and still holds on to the giant wooden man a witch gave her parents for their wedding. Darcy is also blind, so when she arrives at her brother-in-law’s home—the very spot where Dani came to her bloody end—Ted (Gwilym Lee) and his new live-in girlfriend (Caroline Menton) don’t know how to politely ask her to leave. And to take her giant wooden friend with her.

Oddity stitches together a handful of common enough ideas with a few real surprises. More importantly, Mc Carthy hands this tapestry of folklore and soap opera to a nimble cast and a gifted cinematographer. Together this team casts a spell too fun to break.

Mc Carthy’s framing inside and around the house where Dani died is gorgeous, surfaces of buttery caramel colors that shine and echo with the clicks of heels or rattle of ghosts. And when we’re not in this haunted space we’re in the age-old horror stomping grounds of a mental asylum—filmed rigidly and hopelessly, as if to suggest that the science of men is cruel and ugly.

But that beautiful, buttery home—Darcy and the wooden man have claimed that and they have no fear of men and science.

Both Lee and Menton deliver solid performances, while Steve Wall and Tadhg Murphy are flip sides of a terrifying coin. But Bracken owns Oddity—at first the warm and engaging Dani, authentic enough to make you mourn her, and then the elegantly spooky Darcy. Bracken, who was so terrifying and feral in Kate Dolan’s 2022 horror You Are Not My Mother, frightens in a very different way here.

At times Oddity suffers from a throwback sensibility—like an old Tales from the Darkside episode. But there’s no denying Mc Carthy’s talent for creating an atmosphere where anything can happen.

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Luck o’ the Irish

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You Are Not My Mother

by Hope Madden

It’s March. At our house, that means it’s time for Irish horror movies. The Hallow, A Dark Song, The Hole in the Ground —the films that tread that fertile island’s folktales are always among the best.

Writer/director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother does just that. Her opening sequence will leave you on edge, wondering what you may have gotten yourself into. After that, she settles into a family drama twisted around the kind of visitors that have been scurrying off with Irish folks and tormenting families for centuries.

Hazel Doupe is Char, an unpopular high school girl with serious problems at home. Her ma, Angela (Carolyn Bracken), barely gets out of bed and Granny’s (Ingrid Craigle) gout keeps her sidelined. Things aren’t much better at school, where she’s the object of bullying.

Plus, there are the nightmares.

The film is a blend of dysfunctional drama and folk horror. At times the story seems allegorical of mental illness — bipolar disorder, in particular. Dolan and a game cast explore the specific pain and yearning that goes along with wanting so badly to save a person you love from themselves.

At the same time, they dig into the horror of looking into familiar eyes and finding no one you recognize, but maybe someone who means you harm.

Dolan’s equally invested in spinning an Irish folk horror yarn, and Bracken is entirely on board here. As Angela transforms bit by bit, Bracken embraces the vitality of the new presence Mom has become. She makes the most of some terrifyingly intimate horrors, and one particular dance sequence is enough to leave a mark.

Doupe leans toward listlessness as the central figure, essentially trying to be invisible until she can escape her adolescent hell. The performance style often works, but at times leaves the film wanting for a little charisma.

But it’s a small criticism of a film that so cleverly points toward Ireland’s pagan mythology as not the evil nor the good, but the truth that’s working under everybody’s noses whether they admit it or not.