Okay, time for some full disclosure stuff. I planned to have this review posted a
bit earlier, as I went to the Portland premiere of John Dies at the End on Friday night. But, a long week at work, combined with my early shifts and
a couple of pints before entering The Hollywood Theatre, I incurred a series
case of the head nods and dozed off during the final act.
So, you might expect this review to slam the film for being
boring, but that’s not the case. John Dies is fun, innovative and
contained more interesting time travel moments than Looper. And the film
was so engaging, I had to see what I missed, so I returned to The Hollywood on Sunday
afternoon and watched the entire film while awake.
Besides, I couldn’t write a review of a movie I didn’t see
through till the end. That would
be wrong.
The film opens at a Chinese restaurant as David Wong (Chase
Williamson) is telling the story of how he and his friend John (Rob Mayes)
saved the world from an otherworldly invasion to a reporter (Paul
Giamatti). David is using a new
drug called Soy Sauce, which gives a person incredible insight into reality and
time traveling abilities. But some
of the users come back as breeding stock for beings from another dimension, and
David wants to get the story out.
And that’s the plot.
It seems simple, yet director/screenwriter Don Coscarelli weaves
together a tale full of seemingly nonsensical twists and turns that become
clear as the movie progresses. No
stranger to dreamlike movies, Coscarelli’s Phantasm
series has the same hallucinogenic feel as this film. And, like Bubba
Ho-Tep, the audience wants to believe the hero, no matter how much the
surrounding characters, and the ensuing events, point out the fallacy of this
belief.
The acting is very subdued and fits the story. Williamson and Meyes come off like a
couple of losers thrust into an adventure they can’t comprehend, let alone
influence in any way, fitting the feel of the film and it’s overall conclusion. The rest of the cast, including Doug
Jones, Clancy Brown and Glynn Turman, keep a straight face throughout all the
craziness, leading the audience questioning whether the story is just David’s
bad trip. Only Giamatti cuts
loose, as the final resolution for his character’s arc allows for it, and makes
perfect sense for whatever conclusion the audience come to concerning David’s
tale.
But the genius of the film comes from the script (based on
an e-novel by author David Wong), as the audience is given hints that David’s
story is suspect and could be the results of a bad trip. As events unfold, the script is always
fuzzy on whether the events David is relating to the reporter are real or not. And, as with Bubba Ho-Tep, Coscarelli doesn’t try to persuade the audience, but
gives them enough to decide if the characters are true heroes or just seriously
delusional.
As author Wong has written a sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don’t Touch It, I
want to believe David’s story, despite any hints that was all a bad trip. It’s all in the hope Coscarelli will to
make a follow up film and allow us to follow David on other world-saving,
possibly hallucinated, adventure. Because following him was much more fun than any financed Hollywood movie I've seen in a while.
