I've been on a horror movie/horror comedy movie kick lately, so this thread is timely. I just watched John Dies at the End.
I didn't see a ton of buzz surrounding this online and it seemed to get a mixed reaction from the professional critics when it came out. I don't get it, because I LOVED this movie. This is from the same guy who directed the excellent Bubba Ho Tep (with Bruce Campbell), so that shows he can do a good horror/comedy. He also did The Beastmaster, a movie I have fond memories of from the 80s, and Phantasm, which I've heard is pretty great (he's done like four Phantasm movies I think).
I'm not gonna mention any specific elements of the story, the movie is really fun if you just go into it blind. I will just mention general things about the movie that I found noteworthy.
This whole movie has a surreal, weird, trippy vibe to it. Many scenes just make you think of the kind of stuff you'd experience on certain drugs. There's a lot of stuff in this movie surrounding the nature of time, space, reality, etc. It gets into some deep stuff for an otherwise silly movie and I really liked that. I spent much of the movie not entirely sure what was going on, but I kept watching because of the humor and the fun horror elements. There also were so many scenes in this movie where something happened that I was NOT expecting. This movie is really good at catching you off guard and it made me want to keep watching to see what crazy thing would happen next. Eventually, things do start to make sense towards the end of the movie, though things get even wackier and crazier from that point on.
I found myself thinking of the Evil Dead franchise a few times while watching this, though I think this movie gets even crazier and more over the top than even that at times.
Chase Williamson is so good in this. His reactions to all of the crazy things going on in this movie are pitch perfect. His buddy John (played by Rob Mayes), brings such a fun, high energy, upbeat vibe to all of his scenes. Glynn Turman is AWESOME as the super serious detective character. He has an epic monologue at one point in the movie that is fantastic. Fabianne Therese doesn't get a ton of screen time, but is utterly charming and lovable when she does. Clancy Brown is...well,
Clancy Brown. Nuff said. I also have to tip my hat to a certain canine in this movie.
There's some bad green screen use at one point in the movie, but otherwise I really enjoyed this film a lot.
I fond out after watching this that it's based on a book. I've seen a few people online whining about how much better the books are than the movie and practically demanding that people read them. People like that make me roll my eyes as they can be a bit obnoxious, but I enjoyed the world and the characters of this movie enough that I may indeed check out the books sometime.
I also watched the movie Deathgasm
...and was a bit underwhelmed by it. A lot of the comedy is crude and low brow, there's never any clever moments when it comes to the movie's humor. Deathgasm feels like a movie made for Beavis and Butthead, and that's not a compliment. Also, the characters don't act like real people. These people can see one of their parents get torn to shreds by a demon and just shrug it off like it's nothing. When death is treated so casually, the movie feels like it has no stakes to it...like nothing that happens matters. A lot of things just don't make sense either, like how one character who is a jerk throughout the whole film has a change of heart at one point, though the movie never explains why.
I could probably also rant a little about all of stereotypes and cliches in this movie regarding people who are into heavy metal.
Everything about Deathgasm fell flat for me. I've seen far better horror comedies recently like Housebound, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and of course John Dies at the end.
