[Editor’s Note: The following story contains spoilers for “ Oddity .”] To designer Paul McDonnell , filmmaker Damian McCarthy is like a lovable “pen pal from Hell.” The two Irishmen live just three hours apart between Galway and Cork, but to this day, have never actually met.
That’s despite co-parenting the monolithic Wooden Man now serving as the screaming centerpiece in IFC Films ’ “Oddity,” a supernatural whodunnit which, to hear them tell it, was born of impossible deadlines and Zoom meetings as much as any haunted object of folklore. Its breakout character — rendered both as a wearable suit and as a seated mannequin (spotted these days as a celebrity guest making the rounds at festivals ) — stands 6’4” and, in just a few months, has become nothing short of a horror icon. “Thank god for Paul because I sometimes think if we had all the time in the world, would it have looked as good?” McCarthy told IndieWire in pair of conversations digging deep into the Wooden Man’s unbelievable roots.
(McDonnell, of course, was available separately.) “People ring me when there’s this mad thing that everybody else has said no to,” the multi-hyphenate visual artist said. “I’m just that person.
I don’t know whether that’s because they think I’m good at it or I’m crazy enough to do it.” McDonnell and McCarthy’s partnership started with something of a jump-scare, when the “Oddity” director’s sister, Miriam McCarthy, rang up her old t.