Comedies and I don't have a great track record. There's a pattern to it: if it's well-written, it's going to be funny for 20 minutes or so, but it'll inevitable wear out its welcome by hammering the same type of gag over and over again. They're funny until they're not funny and usually takes less than two hours.The only comedies that really work over an extended period of time are cult comedies, creating a dynamic between viewers by poking fun at ideas *. JOHN DIES AT THE END is the vision of David Wong, editor-in-chief of transcended pop culture website Cracked and iconic horror director Don Coscarelli, what could to wrong, really?
Nothing. Nothing went wrong in the movie adaptation of JOHN DIES AT THE END. It's just that it wasn't all that smooth either. It's stuck in an uncomfortable in-between, between good and forgettable.
A slacker named David Wong (Chase Williamson) meets a journalist (Paul Giamatti) in order to tell him the story of how he became a psychic, aware the corruption of the universe that lies beneath the thin veil of human perception. It's a wild and complicated story that begins at a party, where his best friend John's (Rob Mayes) band is playing. Both individually meet a Jamaican psychic conveniently named Robert Marley (Tai Bennett), who sells them a mysterious drug they refer to as "soy sauce", which they both inadvertently inject. Both their lives take a 180 degree turn at that exact moment as they find out they have to survive the truth about the universe and manage not to get locked up in a loonie bin for their efforts.
I really wanted to like this movie. I haven't read the novel, but I've been riding the David Wong bandwagon for close to a decade. I've been a Don Coscarelli fan since my first viewing of PHANTASM, too. It's an enthusiastic effort, no doubt about that, but it's kind of hard to follow. Chase Willliamson's staccato slacker mumble is difficult to keep up with (even with subtitles) and it carries so many details about David Wong's adventures, that JOHN DIES AT THE END leaves you more than once wondering that the hell it is you're actually watching. It's a painfully obvious unreliable narrator situation, but the movie is guilty of telling rather than showing at times, situation that would've been fixable by knowing when to slow it down
Bro.
Maybe Don Coscarelli was just the wrong man for the job. It's not that he's a hack or anything, but outside of the terrific, Coen-ian demon-killing first scene, JOHN DIES AT THE END feels like a scrambled puzzle. His trademark, colourful style is still fun, despite moments of unwittingly laughable CGI, and it would be more of a calling card for the movie if my attention hadn't been monopolized by trying to keep up with what the fuck was going on. For example, what the hell is happening to John and why does he always seem to be one step ahead of David? Is it just because he took the "soy sauce" earlier than him? Than why doesn't David go through the same ordeals? I'm not sure JOHN DIES AT THE END could've turned out great, but a couple stylistic choices made it somewhat of a mess.
Why does a Don Coscarelli movie like BUBBA HO-TEP works and why does JOHN DIES AT THE END doesn't? Their respective tones are pretty damned similar, after all. The answer is simplicity. Elvis and (black )JFK chasing down a mummy is a lot easier to understand than two guys taking drugs, than seeing things, than struggling with their sanity and traveling through different dimensions, you see what I mean. JOHN DIES AT THE END survives from its humor and its shocking special effects (snake lady), and maybe the novel actually delivers a killer narrative too (I know better than to doubt the Wong), but movie adaptation is a bit of a mess and it seems like it's hit-or-miss with both reviewers and the public, too.
* Think about a certain film noir featuring a burnout hippie slacker. That kind of movie.
