John Dies At The End (2012)

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.

John Dies at the End is a 2012 American dark comedy-horror film written and directed by Don Coscarelli, based on David Wong's novel of the same name.  The film stars Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes, with Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Angus Scrimm, Daniel Roebuck, and Doug Jones.

Coscarelli has made some classic movies...try Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep.  When I heard he had a new one I bolted to see it.  AND....IT....IS...CRAZY.  Buckle your seat belt if you get the chance to see this one, because there are lots of twists, turns, and unexpected surprises.  Here you've got mind-bending drugs, time travel, exploding monsters, an alternate universe, and laughs....huge laughs.  If you're tired of silly goth vampires and found footage films...run to see this movie.  It will never be mainstream but this is what cult classics are made of.

That's right, Arnie, everything you know is wrong

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 not only can you go in....those things can come out.  It's up to Wong and John to keep them from crossing over and save the world.  This is a head trip of a movie.

The live action animatronic creatures and gore are very well done by Make-up FX master Robert Kurtzman and his team.  The acting was very good; especially for relying on two unknowns to carry the picture. Both Williamson and Mayes really nailed their roles down to the smallest idiosyncrasies of character. Paul Giamatti was his usual, solid self.

The Tall Man in a new role.

 Coscarelli is in prime form.  Despite a mediocre budget the special effects are spectacular driving a narrative that is both mind blowing and absurd, encompassing subjects like possession, telekinesis, parallel universes, alternate realities, and squirming little monsters.  Handled by any other director I think this subject matter would result in an incoherent mess of a movie. Coscarelli does a masterful job tying in all the diverse elements while keeping the plot steaming along.

Fans of the book will be happy to know that a lot of the dialogue is kept from the book; Dave's opening monologue about the ax, for example, and even some of Korrok's dialogue at the end.  The meat monster and the, uh, unusual doorknob scene is still in, and so is Bob Marley, the black cop and lots of other things that look like they've come straight from the book.

In all, this film was thoroughly entertaining and stimulating

That's not Paul Maxon

Trivia:

Director Don Coscarelli stumbled on David Wong's novel as a result of an email product recommendation: "True story: I received an email from a robot on Amazon.com, and it told me if I liked the zombie book I just read, that I would like John Dies at the End. I read the little logline, and it was just amazingly strange. I thought, 'Well this might even make a good movie.' Plus, it had arguably the greatest title in motion picture history." 

In the book, the location of the town its set it in is never given. Instead, it's usually called "Undisclosed". In the movie, however, the label of the parcel John sends to himself is sent to Sherwood, Illinois. There is no Sherwood, Illinois.

John's full name is, according to the parcel he sends himself, John Cheese.

The character of Amy Sullivan in the movie is an amalgam of two characters from the book. In the book, there's an additional female character named Jennifer "Jen" Lopez, who only shares the name with the famous singer. She became Dave's girlfriend and has tried the "Soy Sauce" herself, although she refuses to acknowledge any effects it may or may not have had on her.

After Dave meets Robert Marley, the boys have a discussion in "Hot-n-Tot Cafe." This name is a play on the word Hottentot, which was how early Europeans referred to the Khoikhoi people of Southwest Africa when they first encountered them in the 17th century. The name Hottentot was given to them by Europeans because of how they thought the language sounded. It is unclear as to why this name was used in the scene. The scene was shot at a real diner with the same name, located at 2347 Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita, CA.

Yo....it's the meat monster

John's full name, John Cheese, is a reference to Cracked.com comedy writer John Cheese (real name Mack Leighty) who co-wrote "John Dies at the End" and the sequel "This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It" with David Wong (real name Jason Pargin). In the end of "This Book is Full of Spiders," David Wong claims that John demands "at least one scene per book in which he 'ramps something,' along with a flat payment for each time I [Wong] use the name in print."

The uniforms worn by the two members of the Human Liberation Army were not made for this film. They originally appeared as Thermian outfits in the film Galaxy Quest (1999). 

The onscreen title for this movie at the beginning was CGI "ink". The rest of the shot was actual inkblots filmed in a fish tank.

The mall where the Mall Of The Dead sequence was filmed is the same mall that producer Roman Perez saw the earlier Don Coscarelli movie Phantasm (1979) at, back when the mall was in business and had a movie theater. 

Just so you know...they're sorry for anything that's about to happen.