philosoraptor42 | "John Dies At The End" Is Inventive And Unique...

John Dies At The End (2012)

Don Coscarelli's previous film was "Bubba Ho-Tep" starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis, taking on a mummy that attacks a retirement home. It was pretty crazy. His latest film is similarly crazy. "John Dies At The End" is an adaptation of a book from one of the writers on the website 'Cracked'. The trailer was absolutely crazy and I've been long awaiting this film's actual release.

More fool me, I suppose, since this film still has as yet to be released in the UK. Eventually I lost patience and made the decision to order the region one DVD and use some software to override the region encoding.

And was it worth it? Actually I think it was.

"John Dies At The End" isn't perfect. (Heck, what film is?) But it's really good fun and very different. The visual effects are consistently inventive. At one point there's even a demon made entirely out of meat products. Even in more visually understated moments the ideas in the story are wonderfully inventive.

To the extent that there actually IS a story, I suppose. "John Dies At The End" features a bizarre drug which appears (to the main character at least) not only to affect his perception, but also to alter the world around him. The drug is given to the protagonists' friends at a party and then the next day a police detective is asking him questions about it. Eventually it becomes clear that the police detective knows something supernatural is behind the case because he becomes more than a little crazy as a result of his experiences.

The film contains some wonderful performances. Naturally Paul Giamatti is awesome as always. Like with "Cosmopolis", with only a very small role in the film he is able to dominate with his screen presence. Giamatti here plays a journalist listening to the protagonist's story.

Another cool actor is Glynn Turman who plays the detective. I'd previously seen him as the local science teacher who studies one of Billy's mogwai in the movie "Gremlins". Nothing is entirely serious in "John Dies At The End", but Turman manages to work a great balance between being seriously unhinged and rather sinister and yet fitting in fantastically with the comedic mood of the film.

Clancy Brown (perhaps most well-known and beloved as 'the Kurgan' from "Highlander", but just generally awesome) plays a Las Vegas magician called Marconi who, it seems, actually has genuine supernatural powers. It's not a terribly big role actually, but Clancy Brown is suitably awesome anyway.

Doug Jones (most commonly known for a variet of costumed appeaarances) makes a rather creepy appearance at one stage. Also Tai Bennett makes a great performance as the Jamaican psychic (known as Robert Marley lol!).

Interestingly though, there are a few major connections here with the web series "Video Game High School" from the youtube channel of "FreddieW". The lead actor, Chase Williamson, has a small but regular role in the second series as a sacastic major player in the strategy games team. But I was amazed to see one of the lead actors from VGHS, Jimmy Wong, randomly turning up towards the end of the movie. (In VGHS he plays the protagonist's roommate.) He doesn't have a lot to do here, but it was great to see him anyway. He's probably my favourite element in VGHS and I think I was probably more affected by his relatively brief appearance as a result of my familiarity with the actor elsewhere.

"John Dies At The End" is a little weird in that the protagonists don't generally seem to care about the end of the world scenario they are faced with. They often seem aloof unless something directly affects them. There's a kind of overwhelmed nihilism to the movie. (By this I mean, they might almost care if the world around them wasn't so bizarre.)

This is a very different film than anything else you'll see. It doesn't follow a strict narrative and I don't know that the jokes are always as great as they could be. However, the whole film is just so inventive that I cannot help but be absolutely captivated by it. The visual effects are wonderful, the whole style of the film does a great job capturing some absolutely bizarre and somewhat abstract ideas, there is a great sense of the weird and sinister atmosphere, and the actors do a great job and have great comic timing no matter how good the actual joke.
Though I think your mileage may possibly vary, this film really spoke to me and I had a great time. Quite simply you are not going to see another movie quite like this one any time soon. It's a rollecoaster ride of absurdity.

A+