Review of John Dies at the End (2013) by Marc I — 01 Jan 2013

If you are a fan of the book then I'd skip this entirely, after waiting nearly two years for this it was very disappointing, minor changes aside (character names, etc) the vast majority of the story was cut entirely, several important characters were missing, (or merged together) there was no character development whatsoever, some important characters were introduced then never heard from again (robert north or "roger" as he is in the movie) while other important characters just show up at the end with a rushed explanation of how they got there (marconi).

The book is full of different monsters and crazy happening and the movie has barely any monsters and really just fails to convey the lunacy of what is happening. and as stated earlier most of the story is missing, very very important plot points are completely missing while unimportant bits made the cut. I could literally go on all day listing everything that is missing from the movie and not even touch the things that made it in but were changed for no discernible reason.

What this movie will feel like to someone who has read the book is: you'll think you fell asleep, missed the entire middle of the movie, and then woke up and finished it anyway...

Now I know people are going to say "well they couldn't put all the monsters and stuff in because of the budget, and the story was cut because of time restrictions" well here's a thought movie makers, if you can't make the movie the way it should be, maybe you shouldn't make it at all. and on the point of time, I highly doubt fan's would have been upset with this being turned into two movies (or even a mini-series) if it meant getting an accurate version over this half-assed mess.

.as it stands now it is right up there with "the running man" for the "movies that are nothing like the book" award. and I gotta ask myself how David Wong, the man who runs cracked(.)com a website that trashes movies for being completely unlike their source material often, could allow them to butcher his story so completely.

The only thing this movie has going for it is the actors, mainly Paul Giamatti, who is the only reason I was able to make it all the way through without rage flipping my coffee table.