6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't.
Starring: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Glynn TurmanHorror | 100% |
Dark humor | 23% |
Supernatural | 21% |
Surreal | 8% |
Psychological thriller | 7% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
BDInfo
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
I hardly know where to begin—this film is so bug-nuts crazy—so I'll start with the beginning. John Dies at the End opens with small-town
midwestern college-aged slacker and unlikely exorcist David Wong (Chase Williamson) posing a zen koan-style riddle to us, the audience. Say you were
chopping the head off of a neo-Nazi with a hand ax—we watch David doing precisely this—when the handle breaks. What do you do? Go down to the
hardware store and get them to attach a new handle, of course. A few months later, you chip the head of the ax whilst bludgeoning a fanged,
Slither-like lamprey to death. What do you do? Once again, trot down to the store and get the blade replaced this time. Now, when
the zombified skinhead busts into your house a year later—his head sewn back on with nylon weed-whacker thread—and says that the ax you're
holding up defensively in your hand is the same ax you previously used to kill him, is he right?
If you're philosophically minded, you might recognize this as a modified, monster movie version of Theseus' Parodox—or the Shipbuilder's Paradox—a
metaphysical thought experiment originally proposed by Plutarch, inquiring whether a ship that has had all of its component parts replaced is still the
same vessel. Is it? Does it matter? And what does this have to do with the rest of John Dies at the End? Well, depending on what sort of
viewer you are, it'll either put you in the mindset to question everything about the film, or else encourage you to turn off your brain—which is
probably already hurting by this point—and go with the absurdist sci-fi/horror flow. This is a bonkers movie that deals with ghosts and meat monsters,
organic artificial intelligence and traversable rifts in space-time, and it really doesn't make a lot of sense.
Style-wise, John Dies at the End looks like the low-budget film that it is, but there's little technically wrong with the film's 1080p/AVC- encoded Blu-ray presentation. Shot digitally with the Red One camera, the image is nicely resolved, with very strong detail in closeups, revealing facial and clothing textures and the intricacies of the rubber-suited meat monster. Any real softness here is just a momentary focusing issue. The color grading generally looks good too—saturation is strong but not overblown, skin tones are consistent—but there are a few scenes where the white balance seems a little off, with the picture shifted a bit too far into yellow. (And I'm not talking about the scenes set in the alternate universe, which feature an intentionally wacko color scheme.) Otherwise, no issues here. Highlights are never overblown and black levels are deep without becoming oppressive. Source noise is minimal during brighter scenes and although it spikes during darker sequences, it's never harsh or particularly noticeable. There are no problems with DNR, edge enhancement, or any of the usual picture quality culprits either.
John Dies at the End skitters onto Blu-ray with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that's clear and dynamic and fairly engaging. While the bulk of the sound is pushed out of the front bank of speakers, the rear channels frequently ooze with quiet ambience—crickets, distant sirens, room noise—and projectile vomit occasional effects, like meat spattering in all directions, screams, or the massive explosion that follows a car's gas tank being blasted with a shotgun. Iron Man 3 composer Brian Tyler provides a score that complements—rather than overpowers—the onscreen action, and dialogue rests on top of it all, consistently clean and comprehensible. There are no dub options on the disc, but there are optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read white lettering.
If John Dies at the End were an acronym, it would definitely be "WTF." Weird and silly and funnier than you might expect, it's another instant cult hit—if an acquired taste—from director Don Coscarelli, the odd-ball horror auteur behind Phantasm, The Beastmaster, and Bubba Ho-Tep. Fans of his previous work will definitely be on-board with the new film's tone, and the movie also seems like a detailed love letter to readers of Jason Pargin/David Wong's novel. The really strange thing is that I've read scathing reviews of the incomprehensible story and glowing praise for its out-there comic inventiveness, and both are right. This is one of those films that you take as is and enjoy for what it is. Magnolia's Blu-ray release makes this easy, with a strong audio/video presentation and a few fun extras. Recommended!
Director's Cut
1986
1988
2013
2015
2019
Collector's Edition
2006
2013
15th Anniversary Edition
1996
1964-1965
2015
2011
1990
1979
1974-1975
1996
Unrated
2006
Braindead | Unrated US Cut
1992
1990
1986
1988