Wednesday, November 23, 2016

MR John Dies at the End


Spoiler alert: John dies in the middle...

Friday the 13th series - Friday the 13th (2009)
Friday the 13th (NES) 
Book One (Wildstorm) - Book Two / Friday the 13th (Avatar Press)
Jason vs Leatherface / Freddy vs Jason
Elm Street series - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (WildStorm) / A Nightmare on Elm Street (Avatar Press)
Halloween series - Halloween (2007) - HII (2009)
Halloween (Chaos! Comics)
One Good Scare - NightDance - 30 Years of Terror - The First Death of Laurie Strode
Hellraiser 1
Final Exam
Black Christmas / Christmas Evil
Silent Night, Deadly Night series - Part 1 &2 - Silent Night (2012)
Santa's Slay
Jack Frost (1997)/Jack Frost (1998)
Pumpkinhead 1
Chucky series - Curse of Chucky / Chucky (Devil's Due Publishing)
Leprechaun series / Leprechaun: Origins / Candyman series
 Re-Animator series
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Hack/Slash: My First Maniac - Me Without You - Omnibus Vol. 1 - Friday the 31st
Series 1 (DDP) - Hack/Slash Meets Zombies Vs Cheerleaders - Hack/Slash/Nailbiter
Series 2 (Image) - Son Of Samhain
Transylvania 6-5000/Transylvania Twist
Tucker & Dale / Cabin in the Woods
The Final Girls / Knights of Badassdom
Darkman series / Darkman (NES)

Movie: John Dies at the End
Directed by Don Coscarelli
Release date 2012 
Genre Scifi/Horror Comedy/Fantasy/Dark Comedy film
Country USA

Have you ever noticed, when you hear a word for the very first time in your life, you will hear that word again within 24 hours? Do you ever wonder why you sometimes see a single shoe lying alongside the road?

John Dies at the End is a pretty odd quirky genre movie, from the cult favorite director behind the Phantasm series and Bubba Ho-Tep, Don Coscarelli.

His fans should know what to expect.

It is actually based on a book under the same name by Cracked.com writer David Wong (responsible for the great Cracked video series Starship Icarus). And the main character is basically himself inserted into the story!

It's a fun low-budget romp, which was shown around festivals before being picked up by Magnet Releasing for distribution.


Our narrator David Wong opens the film questioning a lot of horror-related philosophical questions.

David is meeting this reporter named Arnie. And starts telling him his story.

David and John are two college dropouts. It all happened at a local party where John's band was playing. David met this girl Amy, who's missing her prosthetic arm and her dog, Bark Lee. Long story short the party turn to sour and David wakes up with no memory of anything. He accidentally stabs himself with this new experimental drug, "Soy Sauce", and starts having pretty weird hallucinations.

Soy Sauce is a weird drug that allows the user to have out of body-experiences, allowing one the ability to see past time and space! But it actually rarely works out, leaving its users rarely entirely human afterwards...

Did you know there's all these weird creatures around you at all times?

Which is the perfect time to go through something like this as this pretty weird invasion from another world is rolling around.

David finds out John died. He's brought over by the police for questioning after everyone involved at the party died, including John! But don't worry, our two slackers still have a chance at becoming the heroes the multiverse needs!


John Dies at the End was at first a book written by David Wong.

It was originally started as a webserial back in 2001, before he turned it into a proper manuscript in 2004. A digital book was first released in 2007 for free, online. It became a huge fan-favorite and the proper print paperback followed in 2010.

This horror comedy novel enjoyed a decent success, which would bring it to the attention of director Don Coscarelli who decided to adapt it. And he quickly got Paul Giamatti on board as well, Giamatti would star and produce the film, he really wanted to see this film get made.

The film was made on a pretty modest budget. They really wanted to keep all the stuff the book was famous for, but some details had to go. They just wanted to keep the film as random as the original story was.

The film finally got premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The movie stars Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes as our two main heroes, they really sell these characters with their great performance and chemistry. They're joined by several veterans such as the aforementioned Paul Giamatti, but also Clancy Brown, Glynn Turman, Daniel Roebuck and the one and only Doug Jones who is not masked as some weird creature for once.. but he does play the role like so. Such a great cast!


John Dies at the End was and also is such a fun original story!

It's a very random experience, and that's the best way to describe this zany romp through genre stories. One second it's almost pure Stephen King horror, the next one it's an hilarious smart comedic tale in the vein of Douglas Adams. It can both be funny and scary!

David an unreliable main protagonist, so things might not even be as they seem, who knows!

It's a story that mixes monsters, undead creatures, evil forces, time travel and alternate universes!

A really weird story to summarize without spoiling any of the fun.

The closest film to it might just be Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness, which has kind of the same tone, humor and thrills. It's also not that far off Bill & Ted.

A successor of sorts of those films, playing of randomness and throwing the story far away from your usual movie clichés and tropes. David gets attacked by a flying mustache at one point!

You don't always know what's real or not right to the end. Keeping the mediative narrative tone of the original book. Foreshadowing a lot of the plot early on. Anything can happen!

Sure there's a lot of backstory to go through on a first viewing, but it also helps build the spiraling anarchic tone.

It can be a really fun horror comedy, but also it's pretty gory! Completely embracing a B-movie-style climax, with a lot of twists.


John Dies at the End is a pretty weird story.

The film kept the unpredictable nature, thanks to the people in charge of the film actually enjoying the source material. David Wong quickly accepted the project when he saw that Bubba Ho-Tep creator Don Coscarelli was in charge of the film.

The film has great trippy visuals, a great style (and even sloppy crappy CGi here and there works in its favor).

Despite the film not becoming a huge success, it went on becoming another fan-beloved cult film for Don Coscarellia.

The music is terrific, with some kickass themes and plenty of weird sounds courtesy from Brian Tyler.


Overall, John Dies at the End is a fun little dumb overly-complicated story that surprised me by how good it was.

It's an unpredictable ride that just gets more fun each viewing.

Purists will say the book is better... and I would probably agree with them. Sure. Have a look at the book first if you can or if you want to. But film or book you just can't deny how fun this entire quirky weird tale is! Check it Out if you're a fan of these sort of genres!

While it seems we might not see another one of these films just yet, know that the book was followed by a sort of-sequel in 2012. First announced under the title John and David and the Fifth Wall, then David Wong started publishing the first few chapters as John and David and the Temple of X'al'naa'thuthuthu before finally changing the title to the much more random and fitting random title This Book Is Full of Spiders!

I give it:
2 / 3 UFOs!

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