"John Dies at the End" (2013)

Some films are so overstuffed that when you start to think about them a little bit, they start falling apart at the seams. John Dies at the End should be such a movie, but it moves with so much energy and speed that it becomes hard not to simply get on its level. The greatest virtue of the film is is its abundance of genre-mashing ideas. It's a film overflowing with so many original and nifty ideas and it blends them together into an impossibly dense and slightly convoluted narrative. Moreover, it realizes its a convoluted mess, constantly acknowledging the very unwieldy bonkerness of its premise.

David Wong (Chase Williamson) recounts a strange tale to a skeptical journalist (Paul Giamatti). David is a paranormal investigator along with his friend John (Rob Mayes). After a wild party, David receives a strange phone call from John that sounds crazy even coming from somebody who stops demons for a living. From there things only get worse as John and David are both dosed with a drugs they call "soy sauce" which heightens their senses and allows them to foresee future events. David essentially becomes a bumbling begrudging, noir-esque detective in the middle of a time traveling, universe traversing, supernatural-sci-fi conspiracy. It's Primer by way of Sam Raimi.

Director Don Coscarelli is no stranger to crazy horror with surreal comedy, having helmed films like Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep. Coscarelli's familiarity with handling delightful genre films just on the right side of junk keeps Jon Dies from completely derailing. Unraveling its story, the film eventually plays around with nearly every genre imaginable, dabbling in horror, science fiction, and comedy, and has lots of fun throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us. Though it loses steam towards its end, for a long time the film's sheer self-delighted exuberance in telling its story is hard to resist.

Grade: ★★★