John Dies at the End

Greetings again from the darkness. It's been more than a decade since writer/director Don Coscarelli added quirky humor to his toy box with the wonderful Bubba Ho-Tep. Previously Coscarelli was known for his classic horror franchise that started in 1979 with Phantasm (and three sequels). Coscarelli has a real knack for oddball humor and along with the source material from David Wong's book, he delivers a comical, cross-dimension, alien-fighting, time travel buddy film that draws recollections to Men in Black 3, Big Trouble in Little China, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Coscarelli has had his opportunities to join "big budget" Hollywood, but has always chosen to remain true to his roots in horror/fantasy for his loyal followers, resulting in many cult films and midnight movie favorites. In this newest story, Dave (Chase Williamson) and John (Rob Mayes) are slacker buddies who end up feeling the effects of a new street drug called soy sauce. The story is told in semi-flashback form as Dave meets with a reporter played by the great Paul Giamatti. As Dave tells the story, we get the visuals as if they were currently happening. This works because it's never really clear when we are in the present, past or future.

This is one big fun and entertaining ride if you let it be. Terrific characters are provided by Clancy Brown (Shawshank Redemption) as Marconi, some type of powerful mystic (or something else); Glynn Turman as a relentless, yet beaten down detective; Doug Jones (Pan's Labrynth) in yet another creepy role; and Fabianne Therese as Amy, whose missing limb plays a vital role.

Further analysis would prove meaningless as the sole purpose of this film is to entertain and engage. It's escapism at its finest and yet another creative gem from Don Cascarelli.

I'm not even sure where to start with a movie like JOHN DIES AT THE END. It's one of those movies that just seems destined from the start to be a cult classic, but I'm not so sure. I love a good WTF movie that I can share with friends over a few beers, but a good WTF movie does more than baffle the audience with the bizarre. A good WTF film will have an awesome story (e.g. cyberpunk Nazis on the moon = IRON SKY) and an engaging hero/protagonist (e.g. Rutger Hauer in HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN). Keep in mind, my examples are just movies that I personally enjoy in the WTF genre but the same principles still stand. I can't really agree that JOHN DIES AT THE END has either (much less both) of these qualities. I am a huge fan of Cracked.com and I've been following the site since I first stumbled across it while searching for a time-waster while I worked tech support. Their content is most often hilarious and generally a bit informative too. I'm totally down with supporting their writers in whatever endeavors they pursue if it means more of their excellent product. JOHN DIES AT THE END (written by senior Cracked editor David Wong) is on my shortlist of novels I'm planning on buying from Amazon, but I was excited to find out that a movie would be released in the meantime and that it would be directed by Don Coscarelli. BUBBA HO-TEP is another great WTF film, so naturally I was expecting great things with the movie. The ultimate reality: it falls short of being the movie I wanted, but it has inspired me to move a little faster on picking up the novel.

To start, and you'll probably hear this from anyone who's seen the movie but not read the novel, JOHN DIES AT THE END doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It feels like there's a plot in there…somewhere. I just can't find it. I've uncovered bits of it and pieced it all together but there are still a lot of holes. I've pretty much given up on figuring out the plot in its entirety until I read the book. For now, I only know what I've seen in the movie. David Wong (Chase Williamson) and John (Rob Mayes) are a couple of stoned losers who encounter a new drug known on the street as 'soy sauce.' Soy sauce has the ability to give its user supernatural abilities that…I don't quite understand. Communicating with the dead…and the future…and other dimensions, I think. And inexplicable knowledge. Anyway, David and John discover an evil plot involving body-snatching white bugs/fuzz and plans of an entity of pure evil from an alternate universe to dominate our world. See what I mean? I'm not even sure. And everything I've read tells me it's explained 100 times better in the novel, so I haven't given up hope. But, as a movie, it's lacking. Honestly, my interest waned around the time David was kidnapped by an annoying ghetto white kid (Jonny Weston) and the detective investigating the weird goings-on (Glynn Turman) went totally mental.

And that's the big problem here: weirdness without any sort of context becomes dull real fast. For the first 45 minutes of the movie or so, I was loving it. The meat monster, the ominous Jamaican, the messed-up/dark sense of humor to the whole thing…it was great. But once the "story" kicked into gear, I lost it. The best way to describe JOHN DIES AT THE END is this: it feels like a 100-minute trailer for a really awesome six-hour movie. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here and the whole movie feels like it's on the verge of greatness but it never pays off. There's a lot of cool stuff that's introduced or mentioned and never fully explored. What was the deal with Roger North (Doug Jones)? And what about the alien slug with teeth that appeared three times in the movie? Was it a tool of good or evil? How exactly did Korrok's plan (Korrok being the ultimate evil entity from an alternate universe) involve the body-snatching bugs? If Dr. Marconi (Clancy Brown) was so awesome, why wasn't the movie about HIM saving the world? Seriously. Marconi was probably the coolest character in the whole movie and he's the most wasted. Brown gets higher billing than Paul Giamatti in the movie but he's only in it for about 5 minutes. What's the point of his character? He's stone-cold awesome in the few instances we see him in action, but we send David and John to help save the world? Where did the soy sauce come from? Is it a creation of Korrok? Did it have anything to do with the white bug swarms or not, because I'm getting mixed signals.

More questions than answers with the plot, but at least some of the humor works well. Chase Williamson is pretty decent as David Wong and Rob Hayes did a great job, but I think a lot of fans of Cracked might agree that this movie would've been exponentially funnier if Daniel O'Brien and Michael Swaim had been cast in the lead roles. People who aren't followers of Cracked won't know who those two are, but it couldn't have hurt the movie's success seeing as how the release was so low-key to begin with. JOHN DIES AT THE END is a mildly entertaining distraction that will frustrate anyone in the market for a solid story but there are some good laughs to be had. If anything, I can say it's got me that much more interested in reading the book.

I absolutely love this insane and underrated blend of slacker comedy, sci-fi, fantasy and horror. Okay, some of the special effects leave a lot to be desired (as you'd expect when you consider the film's high ambitions and low budget) but that doesn't take anything away from everything it does right. The plot just gets crazier as the street drug known as "Soy Sauce", which grants it's users supernatural, inter-dimensional powers, becomes popular and threatens an apocalypse that only two slackers named Dave and John can prevent, a responsibility they are woefully unprepared for. If you zone out for two seconds you'll forget what genre you were watching, as it switches from being goofy fun to genuinely creepy at it's own leisure. Chase Williamson's deadpan and cynical performance as Dave offers a hilarious perspective to tell the story from and his chemistry with best friend John is so much fun to watch. A few years ago I went through a phase where I would put this film on every time I got stoned and I just found it funnier every time (catching jokes and plot points I'd missed from hazy viewings prior). It also offers a cool splattering of existential observations for you to wrap your head around.

John Dies at the End's unrelenting commitment to absurd humour and all things random lends itself perfectly for a stoned viewing. This used to be my favourite film to watch stoned and writing this has gotten me so excited to rewatch it for the first time in years tonight. It's trashy but it's fun.

Like many independent movies, this one has a interesting idea at its base and some fairly decent acting but runs out of steam far too early. The end is almost Austin Powers like (i.e. silly). The technical quality fairly good but it is never able to get over the weak story line in the second part of the movie. I imagine Paul Giamatti's involvement was to lend a bit of credibility to the project. However, it is fairly clear that his scenes were shot in a single day (all are in the same Chinese restaurant), so the result is actually the reverse since the commercial motive of the casting is so evident. To sum up, they had me interested at the start and hopeful in the middle but bored and disappointed at the end.

John Dies At The End is an adaptation of David Wong's book of the same name written and directed by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep). While not familiar with the book, the bizarre and surreal story does seem like a perfect fit for Coscarelli as his films have alway had a touch of both the surreal and a bit of offbeat whimsy. The film starts out with David Wong (Chase Williamson) telling his bizarre tale to a reporter, Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti). Wong starts to spin a tale involving himself and his friend, John (Rob Mayes) and their encounters with a powerful drug with a mind of it's own called "soy sauce". This bizarre narcotic not only gives the user (if they survive it) heightened psychic awareness but, opens doorways to alternate dimensions. But, once doors are opened they are opened both ways and can John and David stop the beings from the other side from entering our world and making it their own. John Dies is a very strange yet amusing head trip of a movie that won't appeal to everyone but, under Coscarelli's guidance, will entertain those who like a movie that isn't afraid to be weird and unconventional. Coscarelli moves things along briskly and we find out what's going on along with David and John as the story unfolds in flashback. The story focuses mostly on David as he's is trying to find out how his friend John's sudden bizarre behavior one night ties in with meeting a very strange Jamaican (Tai Bennett). As he tries to figure out the surreal occurrences now happening around him, he is drawn into a tale that is the stuff of hallucinogenic nightmares and it becomes a quest for he and John to save the world. Coscarelli wisely uses live effects for most of his surreal sequences and otherworldly creatures and what little digital effects there are, are used sparingly and are decent enough. The live action animatronic creatures and gore are very well done by Make-up FX master Robert Kurtzman and his team. Coscarelli is one of those filmmakers that is very adept at making good use of a small budget and probably would be lost on a Hollywood blockbuster and it is one of the things I like about him as a filmmaker. And here he achieves a lot of visual impact on his small budget. The director has also cast the film well,too. No great performances but, everyone is efficient and effective in their roles and approach the material with appropriate seriousness but, not without a few winks at the audience. Clancy Brown in particular seems to be having fun as a TV mystic but, keeps his performance grounded enough to not spill into camp. And there is a delightful cameo from Phantasm's Tall Man, Angus Scrimm as well, to please fans of that series. All in all, this isn't everyone's cup of tea but, if you like stuff offbeat and a bit out there, and I do, then this is a fun low budget fantasy that is refreshingly and unapologetically weird in a good way.