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| The retro-styled, gritty, disorganized poster for Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End |
QUICK REVIEW:
A young guy and his good friend discover a new drug called soy sauce, which allows you to see and do things that otherwise aren't possible.
John Dies at the End is a grotesque and far-far-out acid-trip, which unfortunately looks a lot more funny in its trailer, than it really is. The film seems as though it was written by two guys, who were high on grass and sometimes LSD and simply kept all the movie-ideas that they got.
Reason or a comprehensible plot is lost pretty fast here in this obscure, weird, structurally flat and exhaustingly maniacal film. It doesn't help that the lead, John's friend, is played insanely irritatingly by Chase Williamson (The Guest (2014)), who mostly delivers varied versions of the same 'intense' look throughout the lunacies.
I was sporadically amused at the drug/horror/fantasy/comedy-insanity, and the amount of work involved in making this (for a reported just 6-figure budget) fart-in-the-sky has to be respected. But it is, essentially, a bad film.
John Dies at the End is the latest from psych-out film-maker Don Coscarelli, the man behind the Phantasm movies (1979-98) and other weird (like John Dies at the End), but better films like Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). He is in post with the fifth and final Phantasm film at the moment, which he has co-written, (and is directed by David Hartman), and he is still looking for financing for his Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires. (!)
Related review:
Don Coscarelli: Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) or, Old Elvis & Black JFK vs. the Soul-eating Mummy!
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| Another appropriately trippy poster for Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End |
Watch the awesome trailer here
Cost: Unknown, but reportedly just six figures (100,000-999,000 $)
Box office: 0.1 mil. $
= Big flop
[John Dies at the End was never out on more than 19 screens in the US and is a niche product if ever there was one. It has, reportedly, found a cult following, but hasn't turned this into gold in any way, despite considerable attention for its insanity.]
What do you think of John Dies at the End?
And of Coscarelli's other films?
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