Oddity

Small, Irish, and it contains the single best-constructed scare of the decade.

A blind antiques dealer with second sight investigates her twin sister's murder by installing herself in the widower's converted house, along with a life-sized wooden figure.

Damian McCarthy builds the film around a handful of very simple ideas executed exactly: a door that must not be opened, a glass eye, and the wooden man, which is on screen a great deal and never once moves in a way the film shows you.

The scare in question happens in the middle of the film, in daylight, in a wide shot, and works entirely on staging. People replay it to work out how it was done.

Carolyn Bracken plays both sisters. It cost almost nothing and outclasses studio films that cost fifty times as much.