Based on a cult novel by David Wong, Don Coscarelli’s “John Dies at the End” suffers the same problem as its source book: an elaborate imagination in service to writing that is never anywhere near as funny or clever as the writer seems to believe.
As a result, this film is an imaginative bore, an elaborate narrative that loops and curls and twists – without getting anywhere at all. You keep waiting for this stuff to start paying off, but it’s like plugging quarters into a broken slot machine.
This review continues on my website.