After David Wong’s “John Dies at the End” became a surprise hit debut novel in 2009, it of course became a horror-comedy movie soon after. The odd part is that “John Dies at the End” (2012) is not a mainstream film; it only got a limited release, championed by director/co-writer Don Coscarelli and producer Paul Giamatti, who also plays reporter Arnie Blondestone.
Doomed from the start?
Before realizing its modestly budgeted nature, I assumed “JDATE” would be a CGI-fest. But for an action-oriented story, most of the action scenes are of the type where the editor works around the lack of action – like choreographers and stunt people weren’t even brought aboard.
What CGI there is is cheap. Granted, it’s good that CGI monsters do not take over the film. But folks who came here to see how the monster designers bring Wong’s Lovecraftian descriptions to life will feel robbed; you’ll be better off watching test footage from “The Thing.”
Those are minor problems, though, in an adaptation that was more doomed than Dave (Chase Williamson) and John (Rob Mayes) once they get “soy sauce” – a drug that curses them with visions of the evil alternate reality encroaching on our own – into their systems.
“John Dies at the End” (2012)
Director: Don Coscarelli
Writers: Don Coscarelli, David Wong
Starring: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti
Wong’s book is great because of the sardonic wit of the narrator, also named David Wong. Although the sci-fi monster invasion is bleak, the novel’s Dave is consistently funny – often in a dark way, but the situations are so ridiculous that it’s never too dark. It’s therefore briskly entertaining to read about the adventures of Dave, John, Amy (Fabianne Therese) and dog Molly (named Bark Lee in the film).
None of that is in the film. And I’m not surprised. You’d need Dave to narrate the whole thing like a book-on-tape, with visuals atop it. In other words, you’d need it to just be the book. Books by their nature have more details than films, and “JDATE” thrives on its details.
Weird, not witty
In movie form, weirdness stands in for Dave’s humorous witticisms. I’m reminded of the weakest “Ghostbusters” film, the second one. Or the “X-Files” episode “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’,” but without inside jokes, since no one is an insider in this new saga. Except fans of the book, but those people will be thinking about how everything plays better in the book.
The casting is OK, with Giamatti doing his usual mildly neurotic thing as the reporter who hears this wild story from Dave, and lanky Doug Jones doing his always reliable work as the ambassador from the other dimension.
Williamson is too good-looking to play the supposed shlub Dave, but he does project appropriate world-weariness. Mayes has the effortless good looks of the book’s John (although his successes with a bevy of ladies are excised), but he doesn’t quite capture the energy.
Amy – such a sparkplug character in the novel — is the biggest disappointment, as Therese has no chemistry with Williamson, and Coscarelli doesn’t write any romantic-leaning moments anyway. The film’s Amy is missing a hand – replaced with a prosthetic – but the pathos of her situation is absent.
Plot overtakes the parody
As a film, “JDATE” is dominated by the stealth alien-invasion plot. But even Wong himself was not all that interested in the plot – a blend of PKD, “The Matrix” and “2001,” but with a consistent parodic wink that tells us it’s beside the point.
Your enjoyment of the movie will depend on how much you love stark weirdness for the sake of stark weirdness. There is such an audience out there, as proven by the success of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
But as much as I think that film is overrated, I don’t see even those fans liking “John Dies at the End.” The best thing I can say about Coscarelli’s film is it knows to not overstay its welcome, getting in and out in 99 minutes, as a comedy should. But comedies should also ideally be funny.