A woman walking down the street alone at night realizes she’s being followed. As her stalker draws closer, the clicking of high heels on the city street builds the tension to a breaking point, until suddenly… a startling hiss comes from just off-screen. But it’s only a bus, which pulls up next to her, and the woman steps inside to safety.
In that scene from 1942’s Cat People, director Jacques Tourneur invented the “jump scare” through clever editing. The scene was on the cutting edge of horror cinema, terrifying the audiences of its era, and perplexing critics who responded with mixed reviews. Almost a century later, however, it doesn’t exactly hold up as scary, let alone the kind of thing that might make you jump back in your AMC recliner.
Thankfully, there have been plenty of jump scares since, and one of the best examples in recent memory is available to stream right now, making it the perfect watch this Halloween.
Released in 2024 (first at SXSW, then on Shudder), Oddity begins with a murder. Dani is alone in her isolated house when a man shows up at the door warning her that she’s in danger. She’s violently murdered soon afterward.
A year later, her widowed husband Ted has a new girlfriend, and they’re living together in that same house. (Weird, right?) But when Dani’s twin sister Darcy shows up and begins to investigate the murder using her clairvoyant abilities, the truth comes out in disturbing and deadly ways.
Oddity’s overly complicated premise is backed up by a commitment to scaring the audience without resorting to cheap tricks. The movie is a 98-minute-long string of tense, quiet scenes and leap-off-the-couch jump scares. One particularly unnerving moment, which I still think about on a regular basis, uses old camcorder footage to break the rules of time, space, and cinema.
But the scares here also go beyond the jumping variety. There’s the bizarre, human-sized golem Darcy brings with her, which is somehow nowhere near the most terrifying part of the movie in spite of its eye-catchingly eldritch design. Ultimately, Oddity is about the depth of evil at the heart of man, only matched by the unknowable supernatural powers that guide Darcy, which give the film a level of depth many popcorn horror flicks never even reach for.
In combination, these elements make for one of the most genuinely frightening movies released in recent years — not in a buckets-of-blood type of way, but in a blood-curdling way — with one of the best jump scares around. Jacques Tourneur would be proud.
Where to watch: Streaming on Shudder, Hulu, Disney Plus, and AMC Plus. It’s also free with ads on Kanopy and Hoopla.