As directed by Stephen Sommers (he of Deep Rising and the first couple of Mummy Movies), Odd Thomas is a fairly cartoony horror comedy about a guy with psychic powers (Anton Yelchin) who gets pulled into a race against time to prevent some horrific events. And it's pretty fun! If I'd seen it as a teen, I suspect I'd have fallen in love with it. As it is, it's still pretty enjoyable: good pacing, some cool ideas, a handful of good scenes, and at least one clever twist.
Odd (that's actually his name!) lives in the small town of Pico Mundo, CA, where he works as a fry cook with a sideline as a supernatural investigator. We first see him finding a serial killer with help from the ghost of one of the victims, and then chase him down and bring him to justice (turns out, he's done this enough that he's gotten pretty good at fighting.)
One thing I found interesting (because it's pretty uncommon in this type of story) is that the guy is pretty universally beloved. There's a couple of throwaway lines intended to make him seem a bit of an outsider, but pretty much all the characters in the movie adore him... and the ones who don't are clearly assholes. This goes double for the police chief (Willem Dafoe!) who not only trusts Odd implicitly and is endlessly patient with his phone calls (even while he's trying to get it on with his wife), but is also willing to do a spot of cover up so Odd's psychic abilities remain a secret.
Odd doesn't just see dead people. He also senses inhuman spirits no one else can see, which kicks the plot into gear when he starts seeing bodachs swarm into his neighborhood - they kind of look like ghostly, goopy, bug-like mashups of humanoid skeletal things that skitter all over the place. At one point one of them splits into several others... it's a cool creature design! The bodachs of Scottish folklore were fairy-like kid snatchers, but seeing one of them was supposed to be an omen of doom, so at least that tracks with their use here. As Odd explains, they can sense when something bad will happen, and come out to feed on it; Their coming out in such numbers can only mean something terrible is about to go down.
The rest of the movie consists of Odd trying to work out what's got the bodachs all riled up. It all leads to a horrific event that could have worked very well, but it's unfortunately a bit defanged. It's a shame, because I would have preferred the movie grapple with at least some of its horror a bit more honestly, but eliding over it makes sense as anything else wouldn't really fit Odd Thomas's upbeat tone.
About that tone- unfortunately, it can get a bit grating. The protagonist keeps a constant narration going, and when he's quiet, other on-screen characters feel the need to fill the silence, or else a cheesy blues riff rushes in to fill the void. The film attempts to be almost manically breezy, and the script isn't always up to the task. Lots of forced quips and character moments that don't quite land; The poor girlfriend character (Addison Timlin) gets saddled with a lot of them. Shit gets quirky. On the up side, it helps what nasty stuff there is hit a little harder than it would have otherwise.
I'm not usually a fan of Sommers's maximalist style, but it's a good fit for the material here, especially as the lower budget means that he had to rein in his instincts in a little. Most of the scenes with the bodachs are at least a little creepy, and the action beats are well handled (a fight against an angry poltergeist is a highlight.) He does overreach his budget often, resulting in some dodgy CGI, but at this stage in his career that seems to be a directorial trademark. When the imagery is supposed to be unreal, it works pretty well.
Odd Thomas had a very troubled production; It was screwed over by marketers and distributors, resulting in several lawsuits and a delay of two years before it was released... and then it bombed, badly. Feels a little unfair that people like, say, Roland Emmerich can still get semi-big budget films greenlighted, while Sommers hasn't made another film since. I hope it was by choice.