Oddity (2024)

Oddity is a stylish, low-key horror exercise that mixes up a dash of folk horror with a notably impressive performance by Carolyn Bracken as identical twins. They are so distinct it’s hard to know they’re even sisters, let alone twins, let alone the same person. One, Dani Timmins, was married to the night physician at a nearby mental institution in the country, Dr. Ted Timmins (Gwilym Lee). Early in the movie she is brutally murdered one night by an escaped lunatic while Timmins is at work, the work of the one-eyed Olin Boole (Tadgh Murphy), subject of a 2013 short by director and writer Damian McCarthy. The other, Darcy Odello, is a witchy self-proclaimed psychic who is blind and does not believe that Boole killed her sister. Darcy’s specialty is reading objects, preferably personal items like rings and watches that have touched the skin of the people about whom she draws information. She runs an antique shop that sells only cursed items (one is the toy monkey used by Stephen King in his story “The Monkey”). It’s no place for shoplifters. The curses are removed only with legitimate purchases. Sometimes, she says, customers return with purloined items, begging her to take them back. Within a year of his wife’s death Dr. Timmins is already living with another woman, a woman he works with and knew before the murder. Darcy does not like this development and inserts herself into the life of Dr. Timmins and his new gal, Yana (Caroline Menton). She shows up at their spooky weird mansion with a gift: a wooden life-size statue of a man that is grotesque and horrific. This is basically the folk horror element, drawn, says McCarthy, from Jewish lore about golems. Oddity is unlikely to send anyone into paroxysms of terror but it has its share of jump scares, which are not entirely cheap, and a pervasive air of dread. Bracken modulates her performance—Darcy is generally meek and mild, but there’s a great deal going on underneath that and it peers out effectively. She can be quite unexpectedly fierce and commanding. The last image is almost perfect, set up across the length of the movie and presented slowly, quietly, playing with our expectations—and then delivering.

"Cruel and Barbarous Treatment" (1939)

Story by Mary McCarthy not available online.

Mary McCarthy published this story in 1939 and later included it, without the mysterious scare quotes used in the Robert Penn Warren collection, as one of the sections in her episodic first novel in 1942, The Company She Keeps. It was written in the early days of her marriage to the literary critic Edmund Wilson, from 1938 to 1945, her second marriage. It's an icy-cold story of divorce, told from the point of view of an unnamed wife, who is having an affair with a "Young Man" (my scare quotes). She describes the emotional progress of the affair, how it starts as a secret, and then becomes a secret to be kept only from her husband. She relishes each stage—the delicious secret itself, and then the delicious reveals. Eventually that includes telling her husband. She senses her marriage is headed for divorce, but also seems to believe it will then go on to a remarriage. She has no scruples about hurting her lover that way—after all, look at what he is doing to her husband. The description of these events continues, in long sentences and sprawling paragraphs. It is so granular at points that it feels like an insect being dismembered in slow motion. At the same time, the wife's behavior may be "cruel and barbarous" (not sure whose scare quotes those are). There's a familiar childish id down there controlling the action, which seems to be mere irrational acting out. The idea in her mind comes up more than once: divorce and then a remarriage. She is trying to win an epic power struggle more than remove her husband from her life. In fact, she's not happy when she sees her husband accepting her choice to keep and flaunt a lover, even judging her a little. Her bid for ultimate control has inadvertently liberated him. That wasn't supposed to be part of the plan. If the totality of the story is a little off-putting at least it's probably intended that way. I haven't read much McCarthy so I'm not sure how typical it is. It's hard to prepare for the level of rage. That's what's startling and ultimately so disturbing about it. This is a story told by a soul utterly consumed with rage. It'll get you by the throat if you let it.

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine

Spotlight (2015)

After Mystic River and The Departed, I was in no mood to expect much from another expensive, topical drama set in Boston and playing to the Oscars committees. But Spotlight is good at what it does, and just plain good too. It doesn't hurt that the braying overplayed Boston accents of those other projects are kept to a minimum. It seems like recently any movie involving political scandal gets compared with All the President's Men, but Spotlight is more like that movie than any other I've seen in some time—cool, committed, with a certain gravitas, and focused on journalists doing the right thing, tracking down an amazing story, in this case the widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and the systematic cover-up of it by the Catholic hierarchy for years and decades—or centuries. We actually still don't know the full extent, but we know more than before the Boston Globe finally broke it in early 2002, in its "Spotlight" section, which was devoted to long-term investigative journalism. It also doesn't hurt that the cast is a walking, talking powerhouse of talent and/or fuzzy familiarity: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton (who I usually don't like), Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Jamey Sheridan, and the voice of Richard Jenkins—they're all at least above average (though Ruffalo plays it with a strangely abstracted tone). It's directed by Tom McCarthy, an actor whose directing projects also include The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win, which are all worth seeing. So is Spotlight. It's a message picture, obviously, with an eye on the Oscars, but like All the President's Men—which was also Oscar-bait, remember (albeit in something of a less crass time, or maybe that's me)—more decked out in the rhythms of a thriller. They don't have to bang too hard on the crime itself. The details uncovered do the work of ginning up outrage naturally, delivered as a matter of depositions and sealed court records and cagey, dancing reporter interactions. Because of the time and place and circumstances, other stories intrude, notably 9/11, a new editor at the Globe who happens to be its first Jewish editor ever, and the continuing assault on the newspaper business model by the Internet. But mostly Spotlight maintains its focus on the story, and the crimes, which are shocking. The picture is sensitive without having an agenda. In fact, it's a good deal more patient with the actions of the church and its parishioners than me. But I take that to mean it also understands better than me how central the institution is to the life of the community in Boston. That only suggests further the enormity of what the church has done, and continues to do. But that's me on the soapbox, not this movie. This is a very intense movie, and even when a cell phone went off in the seat directly behind me my head stayed in it. That's probably a pretty good recommendation by itself.

The Road (2006)

It's probably just as easy to make criticisms about Cormac McCarthy's end-of-the-world exercise as it is to praise it to the skies. I have heard it both ways, mostly the latter. There's definitely something about it that gets inside of you—I've been reading it the past few days, and in the past few days I've been in a mood—sad, depressed even ... "emotional," as people say when they don't know what else to. Whether it's the book or other external factors is hard to say. But I keep thinking about the book a lot, as when I am on walks. I don't know how much I believe some of it, notably the cannibalism and the pederasty, but who knows what such a world would look like. Little things just take your breath away, like a thought in passing about how cows have become extinct. Or a conversation between the protagonists, a father and his son, about how there probably aren't any crows anymore. Or birds. That's when you start to grasp the scope here. It's a devastatingly imagined picture. I like that the great disaster that caused it is unknown—nuclear war is the first place you want to go, but there didn't seem to be any issues with radiation. Just fire, or rather, now, ash. Whatever the event was it happened in the lifetime of the father. It pleases me somehow to think that Yellowstone went, although it could as well be a meteor strike. In any event, it's not central to the story, which is about the will to survive and, even more, the faith that there is purpose in it, on which the stakes are raised as high here as I can remember ever seeing them. McCarthy is probably most often compared with Faulkner, but long passages here often reminded me of Hemingway, because of the simple, rhythmic dialogue between the father and son that occupies so much of this. Overall it's not as scary as I thought it might be, though there are some indelible images, most of them horrifying, such as the cellar where people are kept imprisoned and alive even as they are chopped apart for food. Or the newborn infant on a spit. Just awful stuff. The wife and mother committed suicide before the action of this book even starts. I have a feeling, if I ever did become a survivor in such a scenario, I'd be likely to go her route. I'm just not sure I have that much faith, and perhaps that is what gives me such profound pause about The Road.

In case it's not at the library.

No Country for Old Men (2005)

For better or worse, I saw the movie first, so it's hard to get some things out of my head, such as Javier Bordem's haircut. Book and movie are two different things, but both are basically worthy, I think (on first impressions), and with a good deal of overlap. At first it read to me much like a kind of Elmore Leonard novel transposed to West Texas/Texas desert, and certainly that's how the movie plays. But McCarthy has a good deal more going on, particularly with the greater focus on Sheriff Bell. His interior monologues are the centerpiece of the book and I'm not sure how much they made it into the movie at all. Still, Anton Chigurh is so monumentally evil that he vies for attention with (and/or distracts from) that. As McCarthy Satan analogues go, I think I still prefer Judge Holden. They are both self-consciously superhuman, and while I like the spooky effect (such as Chigurh's preferred mode of homicide) I'm not sure how much I buy it. More convincing to me on the case that evil is abroad on the land, and it's winning, are those ruminations by Sheriff Bell, for example on the well-known survey of school problems then and now (keeping in mind that "now" in this novel is quite deliberately 1980), e.g., chewing gum vs. rape, which closes on this passage, reporting a discussion with a woman he and his wife meet at a conference: "She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don't think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation." On some level, I know—snap!—that's just too easy. But on some level I know I don't have much response to it either, even as one who favors abortion and euthanasia as lesser evils. Similarly, the Chigurh character seems too easy as a monster. At the same time McCarthy, via Sheriff Bell, understands the more profound complexity here as well, namely why drugs are such a powerful draw (and taboo), which is the root of all this evil drug trafficking in the first place. The money is there simply because the appeal of the drugs is there first. The money and the violence and all of it.

In case it's not at the library.

The Border Trilogy (1992-1998)

All the Pretty Horses (1992); The Crossing (1994); Cities of the Plain (1998)

All the Pretty Horses features John Grady Cole as its main character. The Crossing features Billy Parham. Cities on the Plain features both. All three are set in mid-20th century southern Texas and New Mexico and northern Mexico, which seems to be the most obvious element tying them together as a trilogy, hence its name. There's also the stoicism, but that seems to be a constant in Cormac McCarthy's oeuvre. All the Pretty Horses is arguably the best, a fully realized classic romance of star-crossed love and its various dooms, with a stirring respect and abiding passion for the rhythms of the life that the land provided in its times. For me, The Crossing—certainly the first half and every bit of the story involving the wolf and the momentum it provided as far as I could ride it—contains some of McCarthy's most memorable and affecting writing, images and action and language striking like thunderbolts, or even like the nuclear detonation that closes the novel, a surprising, apt, powerful, unforgettable moment, nicely done. (No one writes better last pages, even last paragraphs, than McCarthy.) Both these novels work essentially fine as standalones, and rank with his best. Only Cities of the Plain, reportedly intended as a screenplay and adapted from same (and it shows), relies in any way on the foregoing, and perhaps too much at that, though I wouldn't say that's the problem here. Composed almost entirely, and mechanically, of alternating dialogue, which too often goes deep into the Spanish weeds and loses a monoglot such as myself (I was able to bear up under McCarthy's ongoing conceit of its untranslated use in the first two novels, their contexts providing much of the meaning, though not all), with empty frenetic action, it's as close as I've seen McCarthy approach yet to using violence as slapstick shtick (though haven't yet read either No Country for Old Men or The Road), and it's the one here that I think you can skip. But those first two are your basic McCarthy essentials.

In case it's not at the library (which it almost certainly will be ... the edition I'm pointing to is a nice Everyman's volume but n.b., cheaper paperbacks are definitely out there if you're looking for your own copies).

Blood Meridian (1985)

 

This remarkable novel tends to be typically identified as Cormac McCarthy's best, at least to date, and certainly it's my first choice, one of those very special books that is not only worth rereading but actually seems to get only better and better every time through. My first time I found it a bit difficult—the dense and allusive language, the murky plot points, the march forward across quintessential 19th-century American West landscapes and experience, overlaid by a skein of repulsive yet seductively beautiful horror, and the opaqueness of its ostensible main character, known only as "the kid." Another tour through let me see more of what McCarthy is doing, and incidentally made evident that, for me anyway, the real main character here is the ubiquitous, malovently charming, and always unsettling Judge Holden, who simply appears everywhere that matters. Him and the landscape of history. Wrestling. Alternatively titled "The Evening Redness in the West," which I think tells us more about McCarthy's intentions regarding bloodshed than sunsets, this tells a hallucinatory version of the story of America and its self-declared manifest destiny, detailing the violence, brutality, and casual cruelties of the usurpation and occupation of the far side of the North American continent, with a muscular language pulsing with hypnotic rhythms. The action often grows positively unworldly, as with one arduous trek across a desolate stretch of mountainous, boulder-strewn desert, and the whole thing feels like a dream that someone else is having, and probably would like to wake up from.

In case it's not at the library.