One of the best horror movies of 2024 has a surprisingly morbid and satisfying ending — and that final shot came about by accident.
When interviewed by Mashable Weirdness We met with writer-director Damien McCarthy and the film’s central character, the Wooden Man, to learn how this multifaceted horror story’s final, brutal conclusion came about.
of course, Weirdness The film starts with a terrifying premise of a home invasion: a woman renovating her secluded country home hears a knock on the door and is confronted by a wild-eyed stranger who warns her that someone is sneaking in and trying to hurt her. But from there, McCarthy pulls from elements of folklore horror, haunted house movies, killer doll movies and more to create an eerie medley of films with an anthology feel, even as the film centers around one house and the fateful people who cross its threshold.
The most flashy person is Weirdness It’s definitely “The Wooden Man,” but McCarthy also incorporates some beautiful yet eerie bells to provide the perfect note for the film’s final moments.
Be warned, there are spoilers below Strange thingsThe third act.
Oddities I will explain the ending.
Carolyn Bracken as Darcy, the cursed bell-holder in “Oddity.”
Credit: Colm Horgan / IFC Films / Shudder
The woman who first appears is Dani, the dark-haired twin of the blonde (and blind) medium Darcy, who runs the curiosity shop after which the film takes its title. When we first meet Darcy, she is in the aforementioned country house mourning the death of her sister, who was murdered a year earlier. Reunited with her brother-in-law Ted, Darcy tells the story of a cursed table bell she carries in her hand.
“A man, not a particularly pleasant man, had worked as a hotel bellboy most of his life,” she explains in the film’s first act. “One night, while he was showing a drunk guest to his room, he pushed him down the stairs, broke his neck, and died. A few days later, the receptionist rang the bell to summon the hotel bellboy. new “But I saw him running towards her. He didn’t look very happy.”
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While Darcy is visibly fascinated by the story, Ted laughs and provokes her by ringing the bell and “see what happens”, to which she warns, “Ted, don’t play with the bells. The last two people who rang them were found dead.”
Belle is sidelined as they discuss the grim anniversary of Dani’s death, but she reappears in the final scene. After the true villain behind Dani’s death is revealed and the bloody gang pays off, Ted returns home to find a package in the mail from Darcy’s shop. Clearly, Darcy had sent this little box as the final step in a plan before surprising him and his girlfriend with a Wooden Man in a Box. And what’s inside? A cursed desk bell.
Just like Dani at the beginning of the film, Ted is alone at home and takes out the bell, and even now, despite his girlfriend’s insistence on seeing Dani’s ghost, his co-worker’s tales of rampaging wooden men, and Darcy’s cryptic threats, Ted still refuses to believe in the paranormal. So he sits down and rings the bell to test his fate.
He looks around the house but can’t find the bellboy’s body. But just as the movie seems to be ending, Little Willie John’s upbeat R&B song “Now You Know” begins to play, McCarthy Weirdness Cut to a wide shot: in the foreground, Ted is smiling in triumph, but behind him, just out of view, stands the bellboy’s dead body, standing motionless but still menacing.
The film cuts to the end credits, but even without reading them, Ted’s fate is already decided.
Damien McCarthy, Weirdness became.
McCarthy said in an interview with Mashable: Strange thing, “One of the things I wanted to do with this movie was to make sure it never took itself too seriously.” Despite the murder, vengeance and demons, there’s also a cheeky sense of humor woven throughout the film. “The dialogue between the characters is pretty sarcastic and biting,” McCarthy said of the characters, adding, “I think that makes it more enjoyable.”
He then revealed that this final moment, that darkly comical wide shot, was something he’d stumbled upon during production. “I found it on set,” McCarthy explained, “because originally it was meant to end with a close-up of this guy aiming at Ted.” While the crew prepared the next shot, Gwilym Lee (who plays Ted) and Shane Wisker (who plays the bellboy) waited patiently on set, the former seated at a dining table, the latter standing behind him with his hands clasped across his stomach.
“They had just taken a break between sets,” McCarthy recalls, “and they saw it, and Shane was totally blinded by his contact lenses and couldn’t move, so he said, ‘It’s safer if I just stand here.’ That’s where he’s standing at the end of the movie. Ted just sat there taking pictures for five minutes, and I was on the other side of the room and I said, ‘This is a really interesting shot. Let’s get this, too.’ And it ended up being a much better, funnier, darker ending than what we had originally planned.”
Weirdness It will be released in theaters on July 19th.
