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John Dies at the End
Director: Don Coscarelli
Year: 2012
TRT: 1:39

Reviewed: 9/16/2024
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At this point, it’d been awhile for something from director Don “Phantasm” Coscarelli. After Bubba Ho-Tep, that’s a hard act to follow. But he did a very decent adaptation here from what is kind of a book. Well, it is a book. I think it started as like a web series that just kinda grew. It’s kinda like Ghostbusters but for the next generation. A Disaffected one. And snarky. Oh, so much of the snark. It works, given the characters. Horror and darkly snarkish.

David Wong and his best friend John get pulled into an entirely different reality, so to speak. Spoiler alert, John does die. Kinda. And Not quite at the end. Dave is left to figure out what exactly the fuck is going on, partly by way of a cellular bratwurst. Probably in my top five of my Bratwurst Featured Films category. But It makes sense. Hilarious, delicious sense. Except for the lettuce. Who puts lettuce in a bratwurst?!? Sacrilege! Brine up that cabbage, it’s called sauerkraut. Probably too messy to get a call from though, so I will allow some artistic license here. And then, a bunch of utter strange shit happens, too. Weird drugs may or may not be involved. Awarenesses are heightened. Meat Men are conjured. And one very heroic dog.

While probably appealing to a somewhat younger crowd given the two main actors (Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes from, well, nothing else you’ve probably seen), this is still is a great “supernatural” kind of horror story. And given the snark and circumstances, a pretty funny one too, most of the time. I will straight up admit my bias here, though. I was fortunate enough to see this open at a screening with Coscarelli there, talked with him a bit afterword. Humble and cool dude, from that brief interaction. While this adaptation isn’t perfect, few book adaptation are, regardless the genre, this is as close as you can get for a little-known book and a very small budget. But fuckin hell, Angus Scrimm and Clancy Brown do awesome here, brief as their respective roles may be. And Paul Giamatti is fantastic as the reporter trying to get the story straight. Still one of the more enjoyable horror/comedies from the last couple of decades, at least from what I’ve seen. The sequel book “This Book is Full of Spiders” is humorous as well, carrying on the shenanigans of the main characters. Hard one to translate to film though. At least back then. We’ll see, there may be a new Stuart Gordon or such that picks it up at some point in time. I’d consider it but, fuck, I hate spiders. Seriously. I didn’t even want to open that book. It even says, seriously, don’t touch it. That’s serious. Apparently there are a couple more books that follow, I may have to dig into those. Hopefully sans spiders.


Great Scene: The opening. Unbroken snow, slow approach to the action with excellent narration as to what’s actually happening. That full scene sets the tone for the rest, perfectly done.

Great Quote: “This door cannot be opened.” Agreed. There are more great lines, must be witnessed in context.


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