Stephen Sommers defined an entire generation’s taste in blockbusters after unleashing The Mummy upon an unsuspecting world in 1999, but he never managed to recapture that lightning in a bottle ever again. His subsequent blockbusters became too big, unwieldy, and swamped by substandard CGI, which made 2011’s Odd Thomas such an unexpected breath of fresh air.
Adapted from the Dean Koontz novel of the same name, the late Anton Yelchin heads up the cast as the title character, a supernatural clairvoyant with the ability to see the dead. When a stranger shows up in his small town with an army of monsters in tow, our intrepid hero takes it upon himself to partner up with sweetheart Stormy and Willem Dafoe’s local sheriff to prevent untold devastation.
Odd Thomas may have secured a fairly middling Rotten Tomatoes score of only 38 percent, but it’s become a solid fan favorite in the decade since its release, and it also remains the last feature Van Helsing and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra architect Sommers held, a strange development given his status as one of the former go-to guys for high concept effects-driven epics.
Shooting wrapped in 2011, but the film ended up being delayed for over two years due to various legal filings, including breach of contract and a $25 million lawsuit over advertising. In the end, Odd Thomas was quietly sent out to die with barely a whimper, and earned a meager $1.3 million at the box office on a $27 million budget.
Despite being buried and bombing spectacularly, though, a Reddit thread highlighting the sorely underrated mystery’s unsung status has only served as a reminder that being swept under the rug isn’t necessarily the end of the world, even if Odd Thomas would have been better off making decent money, and perhaps even spawning a sequel or two.