Review of John Dies at the End (2013) by Alan P — 31 Dec 2012

Very very flawed film based on a good book.

It starts well. The novel's author, Jason Pargin, took his time introducing his premise, knowing he could take as long as he needed, and relished the mystery and strangeness. The scenes introducing us to the "soy sauce" are brilliantly imaginative. Coscarelli seemed to think this part of the book was good enough to be adapted faithfully, a decision I agree with. Many of the brilliantly surreal ideas and funny lines are recreated exactly (although the tone and characterisation don't quite make it).

Chase Williamson's complete inability to act is a slight problem - when required to show some kind of emotion he twists his face into bizarre expressions that no real human being would ever make, and when he isn't he just talks in a half-whispery monotone and tries to look like a badass. He doesn't play anything approaching a character.

Aside from this, the first half of the film is great.

About an hour in, everything turns to shit. Having spent an hour on the introduction, Coscarelli realises he has to essentially fit the entire story into forty minutes, and starts hurriedly cutting bits out, leaving strands of plot hanging at each end. He sticks to ideas and characters from the source material, but rushes through them like a slideshow, with no time left for the details that made the first half great. Amy, originally a main character, is reduced to an unnecessary Chekhov's Gun. The Mall of the Dead is still introduced as if it's significant, but is reduced to a doorway to the next scene. The twist regarding Dave is cut out - but the introduction that foreshadows it is left in. It now bears no relation to the rest of the film whatsoever.

I understand that things have to change in the transition from book to film, but John Dies at the End is a sloppy, incoherent, unsatisfying compromise. If anything, more should have been changed - a new, shorter plot based on the same premise should have been written, and anything that no longer served a purpose in that plot should have been cut out. Maybe the story didn't even need to be resolved the way it did - I'd have been happy if we never met Korrok, but the slower pace was maintained that allowed the first half to be filled with detail and imagination. The parallel universe was probably only necessary in the novel because by then the story had gone on so long that any less definitive an ending would have been unsatisfying.

The film isn't awful, but really I'd like to recommend the book instead. Paul Giamatti was good, but aside from him 100% of the film's redeeming features come from the book, were done better there, and are among loads of other great ideas that didn't make it in.