DVD John Dies at the End
Run time: 99 min
Rating: 6.5
Genres: Comedy | Fantasy | Horror
Director: Don Coscarelli
Writers: Don Coscarelli, David Wong
Stars: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti
|
|
Storyline It’s a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can’t. Written by David Wong |
|
Plot Keywords: invasion, drug, out of body experience, f word, wilhelm scream | |
Details: Country: USA Release Date: 22 March 2013 (UK) |
|
Box Office Opening Weekend: $12,467 (USA) (25 January 2013) Gross: $141,307 (USA) (5 April 2013) |
|
previous post
4 comments
When I heard that the director of Bubba Ho-Tep had made a new movie, I had to see it. It was a midnight movie at the Sundance Film Festival, and it did not disappoint. Buckle your seat belt if you get the chance to see this one, because there are lots of twists, turns, and unexpected surprises. If you have a hard time with a story that goes to unexpected places and keeps you on your toes, you may not enjoy "John Dies," but if you appreciate absolutely unfettered creativity and a willingness to include everything but the kitchen sink, then you should run to see this movie. Here you've got mind-bending drugs, time travel, exploding monsters, an alternate universe, and laughs lots of BIG, all-out laughs and Paul Giammatti! Far too wacky and weird to ever be mainstream, it's the kind of movie that true film fanatics will always cherish.
this movie proves that there are still FILM MAKERS in genre pictures. In a world full of kissing vampires and "found Footage" crap, "John" bring to the screen what seems to have been lost since great films like Altered States, and Videodrome. it is unapologetic in its movement, and daring with its story. Quite frankly, i felt this movie was giving me a high five the entire time watching it, saying "hell yeah we're going to go to the loony bin together"! i don't think I've seen a film this daring in a long time! and a huge tip of the hat to Paul Giamatti for having such a faith in genre film, i love knowing that the people on the screen weren't just collecting a pay check, but truly wanted to be there. All in all, if you don't have the good sense to let a film take you in exciting new directions than "john" is not for you. If you want to see one of those sparkling little shooting star moments where Hollywood accidentally lets loose an innovative and God forbid ORIGINAL film, than you simply NEED to go see "John Dies", you'll be a better film fan for it!
…and it was. I also expected it to be funny, and it was that too. I had not read the book previously and knew nearly nothing about the story, but if you've seen the trailer, that is pretty much adequate preparation for the strangeness you subject yourself to as you watch this movie.
Several scenes are just outright setups for jokes, and if this film was just set em up, knock em down – it would not be worth an 8. What makes this movie better than that is that it is, at it's core – psychotic in the best way possible. You never know if what you are seeing is real or not, and just when you think you couldn't see or handle anything weirder, something hilarious happens to shift gears.
I haven't read the book, but I've seen the film. It premiered in the UK a couple of weeks ago as part of the London Film Festival. As a fan of Coscarelli's previous works, I wasn't going to miss a late night screening of this one. I saw about a dozen new films at the festival, but only one came close to being as wonderfully insane as John Dies at the End. I'm not going to throw spoilers, but if you can, try to see this in a cinema with a big sound system. There's as many audio gags as sight gags going on all the way through, and micro hommages to a few dozen cult classics. A very knowing work of art.
As with Bubba Ho-Tep, this film takes a mindbendingly outlandish premise, which through the course of events, and some wonderfully obtuse lateral thinking, persuades the audience that it's perfectly likely to be true. The boisterous audience at the showing I attended was fired up for the absurdism by Don Coscarelli's brief (unannounced) intro from the stage, but there's so many gags in this film that he could easily have taken a back seat and shamelessly guffawed along with the paying punters. If you like old school comedy horror, with a decidedly surreal tinge, go see this film. It's refreshing, but sadly all too rare, to run across a film that doesn't take itself at all seriously, but takes the process of film-making very seriously indeed. Script, cast, design, direction, and production values are integrated seamlessly into a sublime delirium that is much more than the sum of its parts. I can't recommend it highly enough in these gloomy times.
In case you're wondering, Don Coscarelli in person is one very amusing guy, and mercifully lacking in Hollywooden airs and graces.