To say that John Dies at the End is a weird film would be a bit of an understatement. The film focuses on a man named David Wong (Chase Williamson), who sits in a restaurant and tells his story to a journalist named Arnie (Paul Giamatti). It's a hard movie to describe, but in essence, Dave and his friend John (Rob Mayes) take a drug called “Soy Sauce,” which allows them to see a lot of weird supernatural activity around them.
The film gets really weird, really early in the form of a monster made entirely of meat, which was actually a very enjoyable sequence to watch. However, I found that the rest of the film was not interesting enough to keep me awake for the midnight screening. It's definitely not a good sign when I find myself dozing off any many points throughout the film.
The plot of the film got progressively more weird and confusing as it when along and I sometimes found it hard to follow the plot (the dozing didn't help). In some ways, I would say that the film has a similar feel to David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch – another odd book-to-film adaptation.
Overall, I would say that John Dies at the End is not a bad film, but it was also exactly the super-awesome Midnight Madness closer I was expecting either.
7 | FAIR
