Trailer Trashin’: Can We Spoil John Dies at the End?

Happy Election Day, dear readers! Now that you’ve (hopefully) gone to vote, a new installment of Trailer Trashin’ is here to help wash the taste of all things political out of your brain. This week’s column dives far down the rabbit-hole into weirdness, with the new trailer for the upcoming sci-fi/horror/comedy John Dies at the End.

Premise: 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.

My take: David Wong’s comedic horror novel John Dies at the End has had a long, strange journey to the screen. Way back in 2007, shortly after the book was published, the film rights were optioned by writer/director Don Coscarelli, whose previous credits include Phantasm (1979) and its three sequels, The Beastmaster (1982), and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). Principal photography began in October 2010 and finished in January 2011, and then began the long process of post-production. The finished movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2012, and it will be released to theaters in January 2013. This is the first trailer for the movie since last September, and I think it looks pretty cool.

The cast is an interesting mix of talents old and new. Relative newcomers Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes plays the lead roles of David and John, respectively, and so far I believe them as twenty-something slackers who find a greater purpose. Paul Giamatti plays the awesomely-named Arnie Blondestone, who clearly gets a rude awakening about the weird things going on. Giamatti is a great actor, and anyone who would be in both Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) and John Adams (2008) is totally cool in my book. Prolific actor Clancy Brown, best known for Highlander (1986), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Starship Troopers (1997), among many other roles, plays Dr. Albert Marconi. Glynn Turman, from Cooley High (1975) and the television shows A Different World and The Wire, appears as Detective Appleton, the man holding the large tank of gasoline. Master creature actor Doug Jones – whose many non-human characters include Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films, El Fauno and the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and the Silver Surfer in the second Fantastic Four movie – plays an apparently human character named Robert North. And Angus Scrimm, who played the villainous Tall Man in all four of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm movies, will also appear in an unspecified role.

I love all the bizarre imagery on display in this trailer. The door of light opening in the cave wall. The desert plains with the strangely-lit skies. That creepy skull mask. And I especially love the weird creatures we see, which look like things Ray Harryhausen might have come up with if he was on a bad acid trip. There are the pills that turn into winged bugs, which remind me of the “Licorice Snaps” from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2004). There’s the toothed worm-thing that gets stomped on. The giant tentacles inside the cave. And finally, we have the “meat golem,” as I’ve decided to call it, which is just so disgusting and hilarious that it’s awesome.

But as cool and funny as I think all this stuff is, if it’s just weird for the sake of being weird, it’s not going to work. And the trailer doesn’t give much sense of the characters. If John is indeed going to die at the end, I want to care about him so that his death will have an impact.

Seeing this trailer immediately piqued my interest and made me want to see the movie. However, I’m also very aware of the fact that, though I find this mix of comedy, horror, and science fiction cool, this movie is only going to have a limited audience, and has pretty much no chance of achieving mainstream success. But sometimes, such is our lot in life as geeks (or nerds). But no matter what, I’m planning to check out John Dies at the End when I get the chance.

ANTICIPATION: This is right up my alley, so I definitely want to see it.

Release Date: January 25^th, 2013

Starring: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Glynn Turman, Doug Jones, Daniel Roebuck, Jimmy Wong, Angus Scrimm, Jonny Weston, Fabianne Therese, Tai Bennett, Allison Weissman, Chuck Williams, and Daniel Schweiger
Director: Don Coscarelli
Writers: Don Coscarelli

P.S. I was absolutely stunned by the news last week that not only is Disney buying Lucasfilm, but they’re going to put out Star Wars Episode VII in 2015. Considering the good treatment Disney has given to Pixar and Marvel since acquiring them, I’m very optimistic about this.