Dollar Tree Cinema: John Dies at the End

 “John Dies at the End” (2012)
Starring Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Clancy Brown, Paul Giamatti, Doug Jones
Written and directed by Don Coscarelli
Based on the story by David Wong
Rated R for bloody violence and gore, nudity, language and drug content

My first paid writing job was reviewing movies for The Bluefield Daily Telegraph. I was fortunate to continue that work through college and beyond. But as time went on, reviewing movies got harder as finding time to watch movies got harder.

So while I still love movies, I can't always watch them in a timely fashion and I end up picking things I want to see, rather that what might be the most topical. I can also skip stuff in which I have no interest at all.

But I still enjoy talking and writing about movies. While it would perhaps make sense for me to post about Dear Evan Hansen this weekend or maybe have offered my thoughts on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings rather than a weird Thor comic with a flimsy link to it to draw readers in early September, I'm just kind of marching to the beat of my own drummer here. Or at least the pre-recorded rhythm track on my own Casio keyboard.

Besides, this will hopefully be floating on the Internet for a while, so if you Googled upon this because you finally watched “John Dies at the End” almost a decade (or more) after it came out, well then, we are on the same page.

I hadn't heard of the movie, let alone the book upon which it was based, when I spotted it many years ago at Hollywood Video. (Kids, Hollywood Video, Blockbuster and similar stores were like if you could go inside a Redbox and browse.) Spoiler-phobe though I am, my attention was grabbed by a movie that seemed to lay its ending right out there in the title, as well as the presence of Giamatti and Brown. On the subject of spoilers, I will point out that this movie plays fast and loose with concepts like time and reality, so there's no guarantee the title does or doesn't mean what it sounds like.

For one thing, John's not even the main character. That's Dave (Williamson), who opens the movie with narration about a posthumous beheading and an existential question. John (Mayes) is his friend and associate in, well, some kind of venture/misadventure Dave is talking about with a reporter (Giamatti).

The sequence of events in the movie is so disjointed it makes Pulp Fiction look positively linear. And that's intentional, as much of the story hinges on a mysterious drug whose effects include unhinging people from concepts like space, time, reality and the rest of the Infinity Stones.

Are we going to find out why Dave was beheading a dead man? Or how the guys help a young woman haunted by her dead boyfriend? Is this John and Dave's origin story? Is John going to die at the end? Or at some other point? And, as a reporter myself, why is Giamatti still listening to this kid?

Like a lot of movies, I watched this one late at night, which made the erratic story even harder to follow. I was also confused because, even though I read their names on the box, I was convinced Williamson might be Robert Pattinson and Mayes looked like a previously unreported Hemsworth brother.

By the time I got through it and re-watched a few scenes to try and piece together context, I wasn't very impressed. It was intriguingly weird and had some pretty funny lines and moments, but I wasn't sure what Coscarelli was going for. Add in vulgar dialogue that was thankfully not omnipresent but crude enough to take me out of some scenes, and I was glad I'd only paid $1 for this.

Language.

A day later, before I started writing, I revisited some scenes and felt like I had a little bit better handle on the movie. A lot of it doesn't make sense, and I don't think it's really supposed to, but it mixes humor, weirdness and suspense in a confident way that shows Coscarelli and company were at least trying to do what they wanted, rather than follow a formula.

I found the movie on Blu-ray at Dollar Tree, where it falls in the middle of an interesting spectrum. Sure, the movie baskets or shelves at the everything's-a-dollar stores in my area are filled with titles you've never heard of starring actors you've never heard of, but there are also some pretty great deals to be found.

The first DVDs I bought at a Dollar Tree were the second series of the British Office and Roman J. Israel Esq., a Denzel Washington Oscar nominee (with digital copy!). I later snagged Gravity on Blu-ray for a buck, along with the 2018 DC animated movie Batman: Ninja.

So in addition to revisiting old favorites and curiosities, I'll be peppering in some #DollarTreeCinema on here. Upon further review, despite its faults, I think I at least got my money's worth from “John Dies at the End,” though your mileage may vary.