John Dies at the End (2013)

While I respect John Dies At The End's creativity and ambitiousness, it never finds its focus. What's the point in this movie? There is none. What's the plot of this movie? There seems to be one, but in reality there isn't. It does make a lot of unexpected twists and turns that steer away from convention, but it's the film's burning desire to do this that messes up the whole thing in the first place. It all becomes a convoluted mess of ideas mashed together. The acting in this film is good as is the cast. But so much adds up to nothing and it becomes both confusing and infuriating. I do see that the film avoided having a pretentious feel about it, which is good. A lot of fan-base focused films suffer from being made just for the fans. I don't know about this one though. I've never read the book. I'm saddened to say this (I was actually expecting something of this film), it all turned out to be a waste of time. I did enjoy Don Coscarelli's first film Bubba Ho-tep, it was slow-paced and it actually took its time with characterization. It also delivered awesome b-movie laughs and thrills. John Dies At The End however tries to become the same thing Bubba Ho-tep did. A cult classic. You can tell they tried hard to recreate that feeling Bubba Ho-tep brought. But no. John Dies was fast-paced insanity that tried to shove a bunch of sci-fi nonsense down our throats in an hour and a half with generic characters and a boring story. I did enjoy some of the dialogue despite it never really delivering any laughs. Overall- The content within John Dies may be chock full of potential, but it never pays off. Knock knock Jokes have a set-up and a payoff (as does every other kind of joke). A knock knock joke without a payoff is just a "knock knock" and then a "who's there" but with no answer. This movie is a question shot into a crowd full of people expecting someone to answer it. There may be some people who understand and answer it, but a lot won't. They may say no question is a dumb one, but there are some that don't need to be answered and should just be left alone. So in general, I'm saying this movie may seem like an interesting path to wander but leads to a dead end. Letter Grade: D