Parents' Guide to Oddity

This horror tale snaps together quite cunningly and cannily with only a few moving pieces, but the centerpiece is the creepy wooden mannequin that will likely haunt your nightmares. Written and directed by Damian Mc Carthy (Caveat), Oddity relies on its incredible Irish country house setting for its rich atmosphere: It's a kind of fortress at which visitors drive inside a courtyard and are then surrounded on all sides. It gets dark there, and there are many unidentifiable sounds. And the place is big and oddly and sparsely decorated, with catwalks and trap doors.

Oddity has only seven characters, two of whom are gone after the prologue and another who only appears toward the end. These few folks are perfectly placed within the frame, like points on a map, to maximize the unsettling feeling. (The mannequin sits at the head of an absurdly large, heavy, wooden table, which spreads its seated occupants far apart.) Given the small cast, Mc Carthy daringly reveals the true murderer early, but he keeps the suspense going with the question of how or when they'll be caught—and will it be by something human, or something supernatural? The beats are slow but click exactly right, all the way up to a delicious, satisfying ending. Best of all is that Oddity manages to strike a peculiar tone somewhere between playful and sinister. It's smart and self-aware, but it takes its horrors seriously.