Netflix Flick of the Week: ‘Odd Thomas’

Odd Thomas has one really good thing going for it, and that’s Anton Yelchin. After that, there’s not much there. Maybe I’m being a little harsh, but the film wasted such great source material (Dean Koontz’s novel of the same name).

The film tells the story of Odd Thomas (yes his name is actually Odd, whether it was intentional or a misspelling on his birth certificate is and will forever be unknown), a 20 year-old short-order cook who has the ability to see ghosts. The world that the film takes place in is a familiar one (where ghosts pop up to ask for help with revenge or demons feeding on death and evil), but the mood and style of the film made up for it.

There was a quirkiness to the quick jump cuts, transitions to flashbacks, even the dialogue. The characters were written as if they were floating on a cloud and it felt like the town was on another plane, but eventually it all got really old and frankly I don’t know if it was done on purpose.

As the film went on Odd uncovers an apocalypse brewing in his small town. His girlfriend Stormy, who is supposedly supposed to be madly in love with Odd, but I think is actually just kind of creepy, helps him as he tries to uncover the truth. The film falters when it felt like they were simply taking expositional dialogue from the book and putting it into characters’ mouths.

It’s clunky, sometimes cringeworthy, it’s a straight forward film that is meant to entertain, but somehow produces the opposite result. While I really wanted to like this movie, and based on the first ten minutes it could have been another Fright Night, it just didn’t take full advantage of what it had to work with.

The film has 4.1/5 stars on Netflix (somehow).