MeFi Horror Film Club, #7: John Dies at the End
July 24, 2014 6:29 PM - Subscribe

This week's pic is Don Coscarelli's (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep) adaptation of David Wong's loony serialized novel, John Dies at the End. This goofy, mind-bending horror comedy combines slacker comedy, Lovecraftian horror, and freshman dorm philosophy weirdness.

Plot description from iMDb:
A new street drug that sends its users across time and dimensions has one drawback: some people return as no longer human. Can two college dropouts save humankind from this silent, otherworldly invasion?
Available streaming on Netflix, for digital rental via Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, VuDu, and YouTube. canistream.it profile
posted by DirtyOldTown (59 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Pick #8 is already in the works and will be announced in a week.

For pick #9, we'll be back to non-English films. We've done a Japanese movie and a French film so far. So where shall we go next? Latin America? Scandinavia?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:31 PM on July 24, 2014


Also available on Amazon Prime Instant Video for free. I've been meaning to watch this -- the book was quite good (until the frenetic video-game end).
posted by Etrigan at 7:16 PM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


We've done a Japanese movie and a French film so far. So where shall we go next? Latin America? Scandinavia?

Scandinavia? We could do Trollhunter or Dead Snow or something

I'd also recommend again The Baby's Room, which was Spanish, but might be hard to find. It's part of a series called 6 Films To Keep You Awake. Also someone suggested "The Orphanage" I think, which I had a look at and it looks pretty legit.

I'm sure there are hundreds of Italian horror movies to watch, but I am very ignorant in this area. I gather Dario Argento is regarded pretty highly in horror circles but I don't know where to begin.

But since we're doing a Don Coscarelli movie right now, I can't help but think we need to also get a Phantasm or even Bubba-Ho-Tep in the mix at some point in future weeks.
posted by Hoopo at 10:30 AM on July 25, 2014


I already watched JDatE a few weeks ago (for the first time), so I'm all set! For anyone who's not watched it, try not to get it confused with the Jewish dating site.

The Orphanage is good, but fairly well known and widely seen, I thought. Dead Snow is a piece of crap, but Trollhunter is pretty good.

I also remember Tesis, Alejandro Amenábar's (The Others) debut, as being very good and suspenseful, surprisingly so for a low-budget first film that's practically a student film. I'm guessing not many people have seen it. I'm unable to check availability in the US, though, since I'm not in the US.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:48 AM on July 25, 2014


Oh, and I'd personally love to do some Italian, but there's a huge amount of it, and beyond the obvious classics, there's a lot to slog through.

Argento is good, of course, but he's not... well. His visuals are great, his violence and sadism is legendary (although tame by today's standards), his plots are convoluted and often make little sense, and he can't direct actors to save his life, although that's also compounded by that weird 70s Euro-coproduction idea that you can shoot a film with a bunch of actors from different countries just acting in their own languages (even if they don't understand each other), and then just dub as appropriate to generate all your localized versions afterwards.

I'd be up for some Bava, I know way too little of his oeuvre, and that's maybe where we should start with the Italians anyway. There's some good Fulci too (The Beyond in particular), but it's a bit more for those with a particular interest, I think.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:53 AM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't know if I'd say Dead Snow is a piece of crap. It's a perfectly dumb, forgettable piece of crap horror movie for about an hour. Then the last act is zombie Nazi carnage awesomeness. I'm comfortable saying the screenplay was a piece of crap. But man, that last had some fun in it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:00 PM on July 25, 2014


Tesis is available free on Hulu in the US, but with commercials added.

A lot of people have clamored for Let the Right One In. Sooner or later, we'll have to do that one, just to move past it. It has top shelf streaming availability. Pretty much all platforms.

The Orphanage is available for digital rental on Amazon. No other options I can see. It shows up on r/FullMoviesonYouTube, but lists a 3 hr plus running time (incorrect) and seems unplayable.

I am not as well-exposed to Bava or Fulci as I'd like. It'd be cool if someone who knew those better checked out the better titles for availability.

Suspiria showed up on r/FullMoviesonYouTube this morning but has already been yanked for copyright.

Dead Snow has crap streaming availability. None to speak of, even.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:12 PM on July 25, 2014


Guys at some point you all have to watch the 1980 The Changeling too because holy fuck
posted by Hoopo at 1:23 PM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


"John Dies at the End"

Great, maybe someone can finally explain what the hell is going on in this movie.
posted by mkultra at 1:57 PM on July 25, 2014


The Changeling is fantastic. I'm continuously surprised at how few people have seen it, it's one of the best horror movies of all time for me.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:07 PM on July 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


If you want foreign, what about the original version of The Vanishing?
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 6:32 PM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


> If you want foreign, what about the original version of The Vanishing?

Oooh, yesssss.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 6:51 PM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm definitely on-board to once again watch Let the Right One In.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 7:07 PM on July 25, 2014


Great, maybe someone can finally explain what the hell is going on in this movie.

Solving this riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:38 PM on July 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


%n: "If you want foreign, what about the original version of The Vanishing?"

Oh man, we're just going to continue with the foreign horror movies being the worst feel-bad depressing nihilist things, aren't we? But yeah, it's pretty great, actually.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:56 PM on July 26, 2014


Current scorecard:

The Changeling sounds good and is on YouTube and Archive.org. Let's maybe table that one though since it's in English and we're doing a non-English pick for this selection.

El Orfanato and Let the Right One In have good availability have good availability, but darn near everyone has seen the latter and most have seen the former. Let's backburner those and I promise to pick one the next time there's no clear favorite or we need a quick pick in this category for some reason.

Trollhunter is streaming free on Amazon Prime. There's also an English remake in the works with Neil Marshall directing. Does that make this more interesting now or should we wait until closer to the release of the remake?

The Vanishing (the 1988 French one) is available on Hulu Plus and on YouTube. France is the same country we did last time. I was always under the impression this was a thriller/suspense thing. It's a horror film? And I am told this is a major bummer.

Frankly, while many of these would work, none of them are tickling my spidey sense as a clear choice.

Here are a few other titles we can consider:

Has anyone seen Here Comes the Devil? I've heard good things about it. The trailer looks interesting and I've read some enthusiastic reviews. That said, its Rotten Tomatoes rating is low and I'd want to check in with someone who'd seen it.

Again with the "devil, " but I also hear good things about I Saw the Devil from Korea. Here's the trailer. This is also in the "shockingly violent" category though and we may want to take a break before we do that again.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:42 PM on July 26, 2014


The Vanishing is more of a psychological thriller, but it's horror-adjacent, at least. That border gets blurry, but I think it'd be a decent fit for this group. It's certainly horrifying.

Coincidentally, I Saw The Devil is in the same territory, not so much horror as a thriller (but not at all as much of a bummer). I also don't remember it being all that violent, although I guess there were a couple of scenes. But it could work too.

I just watched Here Comes the Devil the other day, and I thought it was kind of crap, with a lot of mannered emulation of 70s film making conventions (horror and not), but I know a lot of people like it, and I'd certainly be up for talking about it. It's kind of exploitation-y and at least not very similar to a lot of other recent horror.

If we're talking Korean, I think the original A Tale of Two Sisters is one of the best Asian horror films, period, but I don't know if a lot of people have already seen it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:18 PM on July 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Other things currently on Netflix (which is a good place to start, since we really want people to have streaming options):

-Dead Snow (correction from above; damn you canistream.it!)
-Ju-On: The Grudge
-Ju-On 2 (since most people have seen the original...)
-Omnivoros - food writer finds secret restaurant serving human flesh
-Dumplings - 2004 Hong Kong; an aging soap opera actress goes to great lengths to preserve her beauty
-Black Sunday - Bava
-Bay of Blood - also Bava
-Phase 7 - Argentinian end of the world genre blender
-La Horde - 2009 French zombie film


I'm down with either Hausu or A Tale of Two Sisters, but only if you can tell us where they can be streamed. Those two keep coming up, but I can't find any working links.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:19 PM on July 26, 2014


To expand on The Vanishing, without spoiling it, it has a lot of thematic elements that are very central to the horror genre, including one core one that's the big reveal at the end that dates back a century and a half to the founders of the genre. So yeah, definitely relevant.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:21 PM on July 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Maybe the reason I was skeptical of Here Comes the Devil is that so many people who liked it seemed to have also recommended the original We Are What We Are, which I thought was a boring turd.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:22 PM on July 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


I would love to be able to help more with streaming availability, but I'm not in the US, so the only thing I can check is basically YouTube.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:22 PM on July 26, 2014


No love for Tesis, even with commercials?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:23 PM on July 26, 2014


I Saw the Devil is a good one, and is very violent, but it's not Martyrs violent. I mean, most movies aren't. But though it's been a couple years, I don't recall I Saw the Devil being dramatically more violent than a typical hard-R horror movie.

ETA: Like ten comments have appeared between when I wrote this and when I posted it, so to be clear, I'm not trying to steer choices back to this movie. It's a good movie, though!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:24 PM on July 26, 2014


Oh, and yeah, canistreamit is sorta wonky. It said one movie wasn't streaming anywhere that was streaming on Amazon, which okay, and said another wasn't streaming that's on Netflix, which I think is pretty dire considering that's where just about everyone looks first.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:33 PM on July 26, 2014


I also thought I Saw the Devil was good, although I don't remember it being extremely horror-y, it's much more of a thriller (even more so than The Vanishing). I might be mistaken, though, it's been a couple of years since I saw it, and it apparently didn't leave an indelible impression.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:34 PM on July 26, 2014


I forgot about Tesis! That's on the list. Maybe a leader, even.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:47 PM on July 26, 2014


I'm curious how important streaming availability is to people, though. Not that I'm advocating anything illegal, of course, but is it a big deal to most people whether or not things are available to stream in the US? Things are available, either on DVD/Blu-Ray, streaming in different countries, or other means.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:37 PM on July 26, 2014


DirtyOldTown, by the way, just before I forget, if we're somehow doing a "classics" category (I forget what categories you settled on in the end), I've not actually seen Ken Russell's The Devils, and everyone says it's fantastic, and it seems like the kind of thing that would create a lot of discussion. On the other hand, it's apparently kind of hard to come by, although I see people saying a heavily cut version (108 minutes, the cut UK Theatrical release was 111 minutes, and the most restored full version runs 117) was or is available on US iTunes (again, outside the US, not able to actually check).

Not suggesting this for #9, obviously, just bringing it up so I won't forget it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:16 PM on July 26, 2014


The rotation we're sort of playing with right now is: non-English; retro; recent; wild card (to be defined... I got a thing... just wait).

This isn't set in stone, though. And keeping things mixed up and fresh is always going g to be a priority.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:26 PM on July 26, 2014


Well, consider The Devils for the retro category, if there turns out to be availability. Is JDatE "recent" or "wild card"?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:31 PM on July 26, 2014


Also, just to throw more ideas into the mix for foreign language, Jaume Balagueró made [REC], which was pretty great, and a lot of people have seen, but just after the two first [REC] films, he made a really disturbing little psychological horror thriller called Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes), which I thought was really, really good.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:36 PM on July 26, 2014


My vote is for REC or La Horde.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 10:46 PM on July 26, 2014


[REC] isn't on Amazon Prime or Netflix or anything else I can find. Neither is Sleep Tight.

I understand that having streaming options may not be key for everyone since there are always, let's say, alternate ways to get a digital copy of a film. But I am loathe to pick any film that can only be viewed that way, because I would never want to invite any unfriendly scrutiny of the Movie Clubs or MeFi in general, just because of a movie pick.

If we get to the point where we feel like we are running out of good options because of this, we can open it up to anything that can be bought on video. But right now, there still seem to be options. So for now, let's roll with the "must include streaming" rule.

I prefer to think of it as a partial reprieve from the tyranny of choice. If our options included every film available in any way, we would have a damned hard time building consensus on anything. Plus, this adds some interest as films pop up on various streaming outlets.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:02 PM on July 26, 2014


La Horde is a totally generic, forgettable zombie movie as far as I remember (I don't remember much of it, which I guess is kind of my point).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:52 AM on July 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I missed the last one but I'm definitely in for just about any of the films which have been discussed so far. I remember being very impressed with Tesis as a sort of meta-horror film and I have an interest in that particular subgenre because of its reflexive nature.

I thought I Saw the Devil was good, though I think the similar and slightly earlier Korean film Chaser is a good deal more interesting - those both sort of fit more comfortably in the "thriller" end of the genre, though there's enough violence in each one that they qualify as horror on a technicality. Here Comes the Devil had some decent Antonioni-lite direction going for it, but I didn't think it was all that great of a movie besides that.

I was looking back through my IMDB ratings for some other good foreign-language horror movies, but almost none of them are streaming. I did discover that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure is available on Hulu Plus, but I guess you still need to pay Hulu for that and it's not 100% a horror movie either.

I'll throw in a vote for either of the Bava movies because I haven't personally seen as much of the Italian side of the genre as I'd like to. I'd love to see The Baby's Room, I really liked the one other movie in that series that I saw, but I can't find a way to stream it.

Oh, also I just coincidentally listened to an audiobook of John Dies at the End. From what I remember the movie was fairly faithful, though it only covers about half of the events of the book.
posted by whir at 8:15 PM on July 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


When we're ready to do a Japanese film again, I'd like to put in a vote for the 1977 fever dream House. The theatrical trailer gives a pretty good sense of what it's like. It's available on Hulu as part of the Criterion Collection.

The first film by Nobuhiko Obayashi and drawing on ideas from his pre-teen daughter, House is this odd amalgamation: it's too scary to be a children's movie, but it's also too childish to really be taken seriously as a horror film. It feels like what you'd get if the Escape To Witch Mountain-era Disney remade Ringu.

"The weirdest movie you'll ever see" gets thrown around a lot, but House really is a contender in part because there is a reality to the narrative. Unlike other "weirdest movies", the weirdness is grounded in the sense that this is an auteur trying to tell a story using unconventional means, not just trying to film an acid trip by throwing a bunch of dumb camera tricks on the screen. Even if it's not the weirdest film you've ever seen, I'll guarantee that you've at least never seen anything like it before.

If nothing else, it's also the source of this well-known reaction GIF.
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:47 AM on July 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Hulu Plus should be ok even though it's paid, right? Netflix is paid, after all.

So, DirtyOldTown, any decision made yet?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:33 AM on July 30, 2014


I dunno. I like the idea of Tesis, but it's only legit option is Hulu, and while I don't mind that necessarily, I worry that it may not be accessible outside the US.

I'm sort of hoping someone will swoop in with what sounds like a clear winner.

Failing that, what do you guys think? Should we do Tesis? Or just go ahead and get Let the Right One In out of the way? That one feels sort of inevitable that we'll do it sooner or later.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:17 PM on July 30, 2014


Vampyr is available on Hulu Plus and on Youtube.

What about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (also available on Youtube)? Both of those too well-known?

Looking ahead to week 10, I guess:
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is on Hulu, Netflix, and Youtube.

The Changeling is great, as mentioned above.
posted by johnofjack at 1:57 PM on July 30, 2014


Vampyr and Cabinet would belong more in the retro category than in non-English language, I think. Cabinet is silent, so text cards can be in any language equally, and Vampyr has sound, but very little dialogue.

More importantly, I think films this old don't make sense to distinguish that much by country, it's too early to speak of any distinct horror genres per country or region. They're much more "early horror films" than they are "German horror films" or "Danish horror films".
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:50 PM on July 30, 2014


(I'd totally be up for watching Vampyr, Cabinet, and/or Henry again at some point, by the way, they're all great movies. Although I think for my money, The Changeling has all of them beat.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:58 PM on July 30, 2014


Also, I'm much more interested in watching Tesis again than Let the Right One In, personally, both now and in general. I thought pretty much everyone had seen Let the Right One In, with the amount of (largely well-deserved) hype that got.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:59 PM on July 30, 2014


Apropos The Vanishing, this is coming soon and probably great.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:17 PM on July 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Speaking of "coming soon," check out the trailer for Nacho Vigalondo's new English language horror/thriller.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:22 PM on July 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Speaking of "coming soon," check out the trailer for Nacho Vigalondo's new English language horror/thriller.

Ha ha! That's the voice of Neil Maskell (of Kill List and Utopia fame)!
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 7:34 PM on July 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


DirtyOldTown: "Speaking of "coming soon," check out the trailer for Nacho Vigalondo's new English language horror/thriller."

That could go either way, I guess, but I'm curious. I've only seen his segment of The ABCs of Death, and it's one of the ones I remember from that wildly varying mess of shorts, it's not bad. Yay Sasha Grey, I suppose.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:44 PM on July 30, 2014


By the way, DirtyOldTown, Netflix and Amazon availability is also per-country, so there's no guarantee that things are available on those outside of the US just because they are in the US. In general, my experience has been that there's no connection between US availability and non-US availability on any sites. Rights are sold per-territory, and are unpredictable. So unless you want to spend a lot of time chasing down availability for a bunch of different sites and their country-specific versions, I think streaming availability in the US is going to have to do.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:28 AM on July 31, 2014


I've only seen his segment of The ABCs of Death

You should see Los Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes) as soon as possible. It's a SciFi thriller that's a tight, sharp little puzzlebox of a movie. Highest possible recommendation.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:15 AM on July 31, 2014


I've heard about Los Cronocrimenes somewhere, I think. I'll try to pick that up. Thanks.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:13 PM on July 31, 2014


If you'd told me back in 2002 that Elijah Wood's future lay in high-production value exploitation horror—as an enthusiastic career choice, too, not as a shameful fall from grace—well, I guess I wouldn't have believed you.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 12:29 PM on July 31, 2014


For sure! It's maybe a cliche for actors to retreat to "smaller, more personal" films, but you sort of take for granted that these smaller films will be very actorly indie stuff. Kind of raises your eyebrows that Elijah Wood's heart's desire was to make exploitation horror with smart people and smoke pot with an Aussie in a dog costume.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:13 PM on July 31, 2014


Note that he enthusiastically played a sociopathic, cannibalistic serial killer in a (relatively) high-budget movie too, namely Kevin from Sin City. He was also extremely creepy and stalkery in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so it seems that's kind of a thing he likes doing. It's not exactly Frodo, that's for sure.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if "Kevin" from Sin City was any kind of inspiration for "Kevin" on the whiteboard from The Cabin in the Woods? My default assumption has always been that it's a generic slasher movie serial killer name, like Jason or Freddie.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:07 PM on July 31, 2014


I had like frickin' gigantic problems with Maniac, but there's no question Elijah Wood is good in it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:20 PM on July 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


I haven't gotten around to seeing Maniac, but I saw the preview/extended trailer thing that came out, basically the whole first 5-10 minutes of the film or something, and that looked pretty awesome, including the giallo-ish final shot. So, is it worth seeing?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:28 PM on July 31, 2014


Uh, it depends on a lot on your ability to process an extremely explicit film made from the POV of a misogynistic serial killer. A lot of stuff in it made me very uncomfortable...not scared, but uncomfortable. And I'm not sure the film earns most of the imagery it trades in. Kind of like with Only God Forgives, the filmmaking itself is so impressive I can't just dismiss it, but I don't know that it's a film I enjoyed or feel like I am better for having seen.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:59 PM on July 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


I should also mention on a less grave note that Maniac is literally shot from the POV of a misogynistic serial killer, as in we're seeing through the main character's eyes. (We only see Elijah Wood's face reflected in mirrored surfaces.) This may sound like a cool conceit, but it gets pretty old after about ten minutes, and it hangs in there for the entire movie. It kinda made me think of the old Saturday Night Live sketch with Christopher Walken playing The Continental.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:11 PM on July 31, 2014


I assume most of you know this already, but a since it hasn't been mentioned yet: Maniac is a remake of a 1980 film of the same name.
posted by Ian A.T. at 7:31 PM on July 31, 2014


Wow, is that really the trailer for the original Maniac? It's like a loose collection of unrelated bits and pieces, totally lazily edited (including a fade out in the middle of dialogue at one point).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:16 AM on August 1, 2014


Yeah, it's awful. I love when people complain about trailers "these days" because as bad as trailers are in 2014 they have nothing on how terrible, sloppy, and spoilery trailers were in the past. Trailers have always been garbage, now they're just garbage in a different way.
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:59 AM on August 1, 2014


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