Damian McCarthy: Father's shop in Bantry inspired a love of horror films

Thu, 22 Aug, 2024 - 21:00

A former electrician turned filmmaker is enjoying the biggest breakthrough of his career after his latest film became a critical and audience smash in the US.

Bantry filmmaker Damian McCarthy has experienced a career game-changer since his low-budget horror, Oddity, proved to be a hit with both film fans and critics.

The film - which was shot on location on the grounds of Bantry House - won the Audience Award in the Midnighter section of the prestigious SXSW in Texas. The movie currently has a 96% positive rating on international review aggregate site, Rotten Tomatoes.

“The reception to it has been mind-blowing,” says McCarthy. “For me, it's been truly amazing how much people have enjoyed it. You never know how people react to it.

“We won the Audience Award in Texas, and then it went on to Overlook, and we won the Audience Award there. I got to travel to South Korea last month with the film. I went to Switzerland, I won a prize there. I've got to meet so many of my filmmaking heroes that have seen the film. It's been a really crazy couple of months with it, but very exciting. And I'm already working on my next film off the back of the success of Oddity.”

Those filmmaking heroes include some of the directors that McCarthy grew up watching as he first honed his love for horror.

“I've got to meet the guys at Blumhouse - they obviously have an amazing track record. I've got to meet Sam Raimi, who I'm a huge fan of - Evil Dead II is still probably my favourite film. He's such a self-made filmmaker, going back to Evil Dead and how they had no financing for that, no contacts in the industry, and how he was able to work his way up to huge films like Spider Man.

“I also got to speak with M Night Shyamalan which was very interesting. It's been really encouraging - it just shows me how one film can really change things.”

Carolyn Bracken in Oddity, by Bantry filmmaker Damian McCarthy.

This is the West Cork filmmaker’s second feature film, following a succession of shorts and his well-received debut, 2020’s Caveat.

An Irish-set horror, Oddity unfolds in a remote country house, where Dani (Carolyn Bracken, playing dual roles) is brutally murdered at the house she and her husband are renovating. Suspicion falls on a patient at the local mental health institution where her husband works. But Dani’s blind twin, Darcy, a psychic and collector of cursed items, has other ideas.

Much of the praise for McCarthy’s film has focused on its elegant and clever construction, and how it builds its unnerving and unsettling moments. He says the visuals were very important in that regard.

“I think as a horror fan, it's that fine line between suggesting stuff and showing too much,” says McCarthy. “I think it's a mix of wanting to give the audience very definite, frightening visuals that they've got something to think about when they get home after the movie, but then it's also to leave enough up to their own imaginations.”

As they did for his first feature, the Shelswell-White family at Bantry House accommodated McCarthy as he crafted his latest story in a spooky setting. “We shot Caveat in the grounds of Bantry House at the back in this renovated stables, and I built my sets in the same room for Oddity,” he says. “The room itself is so interesting with its walkways and its high ceilings and stone walls, I wrote Oddity around that location.

“It was very much written to take place there, and I was very lucky that again, Bantry House allowed me to come back and to make Oddity there. It's a great location - very interesting for a haunted house movie, I think.

“I was very inspired by it, and just thought it's such a cool location. It's almost like you can shoot these wide shots, but still remain indoors and have that great mix. The film gets quite claustrophobic because you're trapped in the house, but at the same time, the threat could still be anywhere, because the room is so big and there are so many entrances to the room, and there are these dark shadows and spaces that we don't get to visit. For that it's a perfect location - you kind of get the best of both worlds.”

McCarthy’s father ran a shop in Bantry, John McCarthy Electrical, in the 1980s and 1990s, which included a video rental business. It was here that the filmmaker’s love for horror was first honed, and he first explored the idea of making his own films.

“I was always a huge fan of horror films and filmmaking in general. I went to St John's College in Cork and studied there for three years, just learning how to make short films, your general filmmaking basics.

“But After St John's, I would have gone back to work. My day job was working with my dad as an electrician. It (filmmaking) was always a hobby. If I went to an interesting location at work, for example, if we were rewiring a house or an office, I’d think: ‘Oh, this place is quite interesting. I'd ask the owners if I could come back at the weekend and maybe shoot something. I did that for a long time.

“I was always writing feature films and trying to learn, how do you make a feature film? Because it's impossible to make a living from short films. I thought if I could make a feature film, I'd be able to maybe get my foot in the door, be able to do it professionally.”

The success of Oddity has been a game-changer for McCarthy, and he is already working on his next horror, which he also plans to shoot in West Cork. It comes at a buoyant time for Irish horror filmmakers internationally.

“People are saying: ‘What’s happening in Ireland at the moment?’ because of the amount of successful horror filmmakers that are coming out. Lee Cronin did Evil Dead Rise, and we've got Kate Dolan, Ciarán Foy, Lorcan Finnegan - all those super talented filmmakers, and their films are getting internationally recognised. Even if they're not set in Ireland, they still have our sense of humour. We're exporting such good stuff at the moment.”

As with his first two feature films, McCarthy is looking forward to getting the cameras rolling again in his home county later this year or early next. “We plan to film here, and we've got so many crew already down here and amazing locations.

“I'm definitely going to make use of it and try to keep our crews down in Cork and try to promote the industry down here. It's a fantastic time and I do think the West Cork Studios is going to be very good for the industry down this side of the country.”