Review of Odd Thomas (2013) by Thequietgamer — 17 Dec 2018

Succeeds at retelling the story that can be found in the eccentric Dean Koontz novel, but fails to juggle all of it's wildly differing tones making it all for naught. It's handling of the mixture of genres which ranges from comedy to romance to horror and everything in between is just as awkward as the dialog. Most of which is pulled directly from the book and doesn't translate to the screen very well. One might be tempted to call Addison Timlin a bad actress after this, but considering what she was given to work with I'd say she did fine. Her lines are often the most unnatural of them all.

As someone who has read the entire series I can say that while it is a little disappointing to see certain side-characters relegated to cameos at best the actual liberties taken here are minor. You'll miss out on the stuff with Odd's parents and Ozzie Boone is relegated to a mere cameo, but these were characters who quickly disappeared as the books progressed anyways. For the most part this is a very faithful adaptation in terms of following the events of the source material. It just doesn't have the same spirit.

While Odd Thomas the book relishes in it's weirdness and embraces it wholeheartedly to create something unique and lovable, Odd Thomas the movie seems uncomfortable with it's own peculiarity. One would expect that the issue with trying to merge all these different styles together would be tonal inconsistency. But in fact the problem is that there's no tone at all. Stephen Sommers direction is strangely muted. Perhaps as an effort to capture the same deadpan tone of the novels. There's no flair as a result though. Something that makes the wooden actors, bland locales, and low budget all the more apparent.

It does have a star in the late Anton Yelchin though. He gave a fully committed performance and was a great Odd Thomas. The movie also does an admirable job of portraying the Bodachs. Mysterious otherworldly monster that feed on pain, suffering, and tragedy. Their appearance may mean that a lot of death is on the way, but they sure do bring a lot of life whenever they're on the screen. More so than the excessively slow motioned action sequences do.

What's most shocking and undesirable about the whole thing is that it manages to make a supernatural mystery-thriller about an unassuming fry cook with the ability to see the dead people feel boring and by the numbers. A vanilla adaptation of a story that's anything but. Skip the movie. Read the book. 4.