I've been avoiding watching this movie, because I loved the book, and I knew if I watched the movie and they ruined it I'd be pissed off, but if I watched it and they did a good job I'd be devastated, because a lot of things in the book's plot hit me pretty hard (she said vaguely) so either way, I'd be very emotional. I wanted to give it a chance, though, so I finally bit the bullet and gave the movie a shot today
First off, I'm really starting to like Anton Yelchin. He was in "Burying the Ex" and he did a good job in that movie, too. It would be easy to make Odd Thomas a caricature by over playing the role, but he never does that. And of course, I love Willem Defoe, and he could be in every movie ever made, and I'd be ok with that. I hadn't heard of Addison Timlin before this movie, but she did a great job playing Stormy.
The movie sticks pretty close to the book, and when it deviates, I mostly liked the changes they made. The book relies heavily on Odd's narration, and we're always in his head, so the movie conveys this by giving us a lot of voice over narration. This can get annoying pretty fast, but the movie did it well, for the most part. There was only one scene near the end where it was so heavy-handed that I yelled at the screen for him to shut up (show, don't tell, filmmakers, GEEZE, lazy ass).
Overall, I ended up enjoying this movie a lot. I could actually see the filmmakers doing a good job with at least the next two books in the series, because I really think they could pull them off and do something special if they were able to maintain the quality of this first film (I could see Yelchin and Defoe doing one scene in particular from the second book that still makes me nearly pee my pants with laughter every time I think of it, and I love it to pieces). Time will tell if we ever get another movie in this series, but in the meantime, this one is worth checking out.
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