Before I begin, I would like to note that I didn't watch the entire movie. I stopped when the scenes became too different from the book because I didn't want to spoil anything (I didn't finish reading yet). However, deciding when to stop was quite difficult because from what I saw, the movie and the book, so far, were very, very different. To begin their contrasts, the narrator and titular character, Odd Thomas, no longer had an omniscient point of view. The movie is told in present tense, and most of what should have been description became dialogue. To be honest, this was my least favorite change between the two mediums. In comparison to the minor tweaks within other scenes, such as changing a five-year-old British kid who gets ran over into a gangster want-to-be who gets ran over, or the lack of an Elvis ghost, the dialogue comes across more awkward between characters feeling clunky, taking away from the immersion the book gave the reader. To add on to this, the atmosphere the movie gives off with the filters and acting makes the tone seem a bit too comedic. Yes, in the book, Koontz writes Odd to be sarcastic and witty, overall awkward, but in the movie, he comes across more assertive and cool (for lack of a better term). Through movie magic, they've even given him karate skills. I'm not saying that the movie is completely bad though, I haven't watched all of it yet. Moreover, concerning its shortcomings, I understand that compressing a lot of information from more than several hundred pages under a single hour and a few minutes is difficult. Honestly, it isn't as bad as I make it out to be. Different from the book, but still entertaining.
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