John Dies At The End (2012)

Directed by Don Coscarelli
Run time: 99 minutes

This movie came about because of a love of the Phantasm movie franchise and a love of zombie novels. David Wong (real name Jason Pargin ) is the author of John Dies at the End and a massive fan of the Phantasm movies. According to the forward Don Coscarelli wrote for John Dies at the End, his favorite guilty pleasure is reading zombie novels.When an online book retailer suggested that Don Coscarelli would like to read a book with meat demons, parasites with plans of planetary domination, weird parallel dimensions, bratwurst cellphone, and a street drug called soy sauce that gives the user all kinds of weird abilities. Leading Coscarelli to buy the book, devour the book, and turn the book into a weird fun film.

Like the book, the movie opens with the riddle of the universe. The riddle is this, the guy who you shot a few months ago comes back and kicks your door in. You grab the ax purchased and take the guy out again. In the process of defending yourself you break the handle and have to go back to the store with a bullshit story about the blood stains on the handle. Armed with a fixed ax you go home to find an inter-dimensional slug thing in your kitchen. Taking your ax you proceed to kill the thing and notch the head on your kitchen table. So back to the store, another bullshit story, and a new ax head. Returning home you find the guy you killed twice back again, his sewn back on with hedge trimmer wire, and looking for a rematch. He also is looking at you like your the guy who killed and that is the ax that did the job. Is he right, is that the same ax that killed him?

The story is centered around John and Dave. Two college drop outs that after being exposed to the drug soy sauce have been chosen to be defenders of Earth and Earths in parallel dimensions. With the aid of Marconi (Clancy Brown), a infomercial guru with supernatural powers, these two screw ups go on a strange adventure to save Earth from a bizarre invasion. The reason for this invasion sis the drug soy sauce. Aside from giving people strange supernatural powers, it's alive, and can act as a gateway for creatures to go from one reality to the next. Because of this a parasite with track record of destroying worlds and our slackers are the only ones destined to somehow step up and be the big damn heroes.

Overall this is a fun but incredibly strange movie. There are some issues with the movie because of the off the wall insanity. Best example of this is Dave uses soy sauce to go back in time to prevent his own murder. It is insanely clever use of time travel but part way through his time travel trip Dave ends up in some post apocalyptic nightmare for no reason. Other than that, the film has sold preferences by it's cast. There is a cameo by Phantasm's own Tall Man Angus Scrimm as the last priest you would want to talk to on a exorcism hotline.

I highly recommend John Dies at the End if your a fan of crude humor, general weirdness, and bizarrely amusing horror movies. Though this is a movie review I also highly recommending the book as well.

MVT: The scene that shows how this society dealt with people who did not except this organic A.I. as their overlord. Because the historic record was too graphic for John and Dave to comprehend the society made an incredibly graphic and violent cartoon to show a graphic and bloody purge.

Make or Break: What made it for me was Dave's character arc. He grows and changes as a character but he never stops being cynical jerk.

Score: 7.5 out of 10