John Dies at the End

Don Coscarelli – 2013 – USA

As a big fan of Coscarelli’s 70s movies – a trilogy about death and coming-of-age; Jim, the World’s Greatest (1974), Kenny & Co. (1976) and Phantasm (1979) – I am always waiting for some kind of return-to-form on the director’s part.  That hasn’t quite happened yet, even though I’m happy to see his films Bubba Ho-tep (2002) and John Dies at the End get such enthusiastic reactions from audiences.  There’s a feeling about these films that smacks of being calculated to draw cult appeal, but that’s not the worst thing a film can do.  Apparently John Dies at the End is a famous graphic novel or something; I don’t know anything about it, but a lot of fans seem to think the film does the source material justice.  Although he flies fairly low under the radar, Coscarelli’s motifs are as pronounced and persistent as Tim Burton’s or David Cronenberg’s.  The particulars of death and dying – rigor mortis, coagulation, embalming, internment, etc. – are featured in almost all of his films.  The plot concerns a young slacker named David (Chase Williamson) relating his wild paranormal history to a writer (Paul Giamatti), which involves demonic possession, aliens, revived corpses, parallel dimensions and a mysterious drug, a thick black liquid nicknamed ‘soy sauce.’  Generally it’s fun and fast-moving, packing a lot of humor and thought-provoking ideas into 99 minutes.  One thing I’ve always admired about Coscarelli is that he functions with little or no help from Hollywood and has always pursued unique means of both production and distribution.  Half of Phantasm IV (1998), for example, was comprised of footage shot with the same actors for the first Phantasm movie in the late 70s, allowing for a fascinating flashback scenario that I don’t believe has been done before or since.  Coscarelli personally took Bubba Ho-tep on a roadshow tour before releasing it, making it a highly anticipated item at festivals.  Now with John Dies at the End, he has released it on-line and to limited theaters simultaneously.  It’s a smart way to bypass the demands of impressing middlebrow hack critics and opening-weekend movie-goers and get straight to the target audience with no limbo period.