Movie Matchmaker: Alfonso Cuaron's Odd Thomas
by Brian Tallerico

As much as the talkback flamers and overzealous bloggers might try to deny it, the internet is primarily about bringing people together. Here at The Deadbolt, we do our part to that end with a recurring feature designed to bring books we love into the hands of film directors that we think would be a perfect fit for the material with the hopes that the marriage will produce a bouncing bundle of movie adaptation greatness. We're like EHarmony.com for movies and books. Call us ELiteracy. If you’ve been following closely, the first edition of Movie Matchmaker - David Fincher's World War Z - ended with the tease that we'd be tackling Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor. Well, slap our hands for not doing enough research, but Hollywood beat us to it. It looks like the best book from the writer of Fight Club is moving forward with I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence behind the camera. Maybe someday we'll express our concerns with that match in a feature called Movie Marriage Counselor, but for now, we'll keep things positive and move on to one of the best supernatural books of the last decade.

In this edition of Movie Matchmaker, the horror and fantasy nuts at The Deadbolt have turned their eyes to a man who desperately needs a good match when it comes to the cinematic adaptations of his work - Dean Koontz. Deano often gets written off or derided as "second-rate Stephen King" and, we'll admit, a lot of his books do fall into that category. But, even if you don't think a lot about Koontz, the disconnect between his success in mass-market paperbacks and his lack thereof on the big screen is undeniably ridiculous. The man has written ten number one, best-selling hardcovers and fourteen paperbacks and has a rabid fanbase of millions of fans. Don't you think one of those massively successful books should’ve been turned into a hit feature film by now? Koontz is in the position that I imagine Stephen King would have been in if he hadn't met Stanley Kubrick, Rob Reiner, or Frank Darabont. If there’s a movie made of his Koontz’s work, it's usually of the cable TV variety with his only notable based-on feature films being Watchers (for you Corey Haim fans), Intensity (a pretty good TV movie with John C. McGinley), and Phantoms (because, well, "Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms!").

The thing is that Koontz shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, some of his recent books have been the most successful of his career both critically and commercially, and the guy writes an average of three books a year. So, how do we turn the corner for Koontz on the big screen? Where is his Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, or The Shining? Focus Features is apparently moving forward with an adaptation of The Husband, one his recent thriller hits, and that's actually a step in the right direction, presuming they don't get a horrible cast and director. But there's a book sitting on the shelf right now that is one of the most cinematically rich novels of the last few years, a book so successful at creating its own world that Koontz has already released two sequels with a third to come out in just a few weeks. The movie that could easily take the world of Dean Koontz out of the B-movie doldrums and into the light is clear - Odd Thomas.

THE BOOK:

Think back, long before you were permanently burned by The Village and The Lady in the Water, to the time when M. Night Shyamalan could still blow your mind. Try and remember The Sixth Sense free from all the hype surrounding the ending. One of the more interesting elements of the plot was not just that Cole (Haley Joel Osment) could see dead people but that he was often being asked for help or even just a point in the right direction by these ghostly visions. One of the best scenes in the movie features the dead-and-puking Kyra (a VERY pre-OC Mischa Barton) reaching out to Cole to make the wrong-ness of her passing right again. Odd Thomas could almost be described as a grown-up Cole Sear. Odd sees ghosts. They don't talk to him. He can't touch them. He can't really physically help them. They often serve as guides to take Odd to the scene of a crime or help solve a mystery (kind of like NBC's Medium) but they're also sometimes just a warning of things to come. For Odd, the fine line between life and death is a little torn.

Unlike Cole, Odd's not afraid. Naturally, when the ghost of a young girl guides our hero to her brutal killer, he's disturbed, but otherwise, Odd lives a happy life. He works as a short-order cook in a small town, has a girlfriend named Stormy that he considers his soul mate, and a number of close friends in his near-Mayberry existence. But there is one thing in Odd's world that can throw him off, and those are the Bodachs, shadowy spirit creatures that surface near scenes of horrible disaster or death, either a recent one or, in the case of Odd Thomas, an upcoming one. The Bodachs feed off pain and death and, when Odd sees a number of them gathering in his home town, he wonders what they're waiting for. The creepy new guy in town who appears to have a room that's a portal to the Bodach world doesn't help and, when his friends start dreaming of their own deaths, the dark appears to be closing in for Odd.

Odd Thomas, the best Koontz book I've read (and, it should be noted, I've read far from all of them - there are simply too many - but I have read more than average), works because Koontz deftly juggles several elements of his basic plot. The story outlined loosely above could have just been another thriller, something more appropriate for a cable TV movie, but there are elements here that could make for a FANTASTIC film. First, there's the small-town life that Koontz so lovingly recreates. It's not that the people in Pico Mundo are innocent, but there's something interesting about setting a story like this in a town where everybody knows the short-order cook (and most people know he's a little weird). Koontz writes "Odd leads a simple life because he has to. He finds the job of speaking to the lingering dead complicated enough." It's the way that Koontz focuses on both the "simple life" and the "lingering dead" that really drive Odd Thomas. And then there's the love story. We at The Deadbolt have been hardened into cynics by years of horrible manipulative romances, but the love story in Odd Thomas really works. It's one of the few books that could make a convict cry in its final act, and the movie wouldn't leave a dry eye in the entire house. Guaranteed. The ending alone would be so powerful for most people that the word-of-mouth on Odd Thomas: The Movie would make it a gigantic hit.

The small-town life that borders on Pleasantville and the romantic heart of the piece give Koontz's story undeniable depth, but what shouldn't be ignored is that, first and foremost, Odd Thomas would make for an incredibly knuckle-whitening thriller. Koontz sets up enough mystery - is the new guy surrounded by Bodachs a killer himself or just another piece in the puzzle and why is Odd dreaming about people being murdered with automatic weapons? - that the right director could turn this into a very satisfying thriller. The main problem for any movie studio interested in Odd Thomas is going to be getting over the somewhat un-PC final act which features a massacre at a shopping mall. When real psychos are walking into schools or public places and opening fire, studios get leery of the potential of having to push or even shelve a movie if it happens to be too close to reality. For Odd Thomas however, it's a risk that a producer should take and, especially with the heartbreaking themes of the story, they should recognize that, even if reality does eerily parallel fiction, audiences are smart enough to separate the two.

Movie Matchmaker: Alfonso Cuaron's Odd Thomas Page 2