When two self-destructive best friends accidentally kill their drug dealer, they have to flee town. Stopping at a roadside antique shop, they quickly discover that the older woman running the place isn’t as sweet as she seems. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire as they fight for survival while the criminals they were running away from descend on the property…
Grimmfest says: Tyler Savage’s ODDITIES began life as a short; a Tarantinoesque TALES FROM THE CRYPT style sting-in-the-tail, which screened at Grimmfest in 2023. The feature film keeps the core concept, along with original star Adrienne Barbeau, adds Xander Berkeley and Will Oldham to the mix, and runs with it, but in a very different direction, with the end result being more WEIRD TALES than EC Comics. Only with a twist or two of Tobe Hooper amid all the arcane rituals and Elder Gods. Pacy, witty, knowing in its use of genre tropes and traditions, and with the same kind of frenetic energy and visual snap and crackle as the original short, with fine performances from an execellent cast, who bring nuance and detail to some deftly drawn characters, it’s a film that celebrates and finds new life in genre traditions, and is a masterclass in how to expand a successful short to feature length without losing the strengths of the original. Great use of music, too.