FEATURE: John Dies At the End, From Book to Movie

"Okay, okay.  This thing I've got pointed at you, you know what it does?"

He nodded, said, "I believe I have an idea, yes."

"And have you ever heard the old human saying, 'I want to shoot you so bad, my dick's hard'?"

Imagine Joseph Campbell invaded by Lovecraft monsters and sprinkled with National Lampoon humor, and you have some idea of the tone of sci-fi/horror novel John Dies At the End.  The book is a sharp, silly story that unexpectedly deepens as it develops, and the one-damn-monster-after-the-other pacing allows almost no downtime between its bursts of violence and adolescent jokes.  Sometimes the two connect, like when the heroes attempt to escape a meat monster (built entirely out of cold cuts) and are cut short by a doorknob that magically turns into a penis.  What're they supposed to do, twist the knob?  Don't be gay.

The heroes of the novel are David and John, freelance ghost-busters who discover a strange drug they call "soy sauce" that gives its users telepathy and partial omniscience.  Cool, right?  Unfortunately, the soy sauce connects in some oblique way to an enigmatic being called Korrok, who's currently drawing up ominous plans for life, the universe, and everything.  One of the best moments in the book is the reveal of what exactly Korrok is, in large part because the reveal also gives Korrok an unexpected sense of personality.  Against Korrok's manipulations and monster emissaries, David takes small but tenable steps toward some kind of maturity.

Despite all my rage, I am still just a...whatever the hell I am...

At times, the book's storyline threatens to spin apart - author David Wong (an alias for Jason Pargin of Cracked) originally started the story as an online serial, and the enormous, haphazardly-explained bestiary (snake women, trans-dimensional scorpions, zombies) suggests someone fearful of losing the shortest of attention spans.  Luckily, the constant invention keeps events fast-paced, and the heroes respond with an admirable, pop-culture-infused deadpan.  An example: after discovering an enchanted doorway, John refers to the wasteland they find on the other side as "Shit Narnia."

The novel's overstuffed, generous quality feels like a perfect fit for Don Coscarelli, the filmmaker behind the kooky Phantasm series and the improbably dramatic Bubba Ho-Tep.  The latter deserves extra mention: an adaptation of a short story by the prolific Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba juggles memoir, American history, mummy attacks, and jokes about male organs.  The film makes you laugh, and then it involves, and then the film makes you laugh again because it got you involved.  With Bubba, I gained a deep respect for Coscarelli, who found sincerity and a little bit of truth in a story about a corpse that sucks souls out of the buttholes of old people.

Volume's fading.  Must be low on mustard.

John Dies At the End, unfortunately, doesn't quite match the success of Bubba Ho-Tep.  In order to make the movie work as a hundred-minute feature, Coscarelli inevitably removes much of the near-500-page novel.  What sucks is that so much of what he removes feels essential to the novel's heart and ideas, and what remains feels superficial, with only slight hints of the story's dramatic impact.  The steps of the journey remain loosely intact, but the path is gone.  Some of the more notable changes:

In the novel, the events of John Dies At the End take place over the course of a couple of years.  In the film, the story's compressed into a few days (if even that).

In the novel, there's much more emphasis on the tentative relationship between David and love interest Amy.  In the film, they pass few words, and their kiss at the end feels perfunctory.

Thousands of man-eating Buick-sized spiders.  Because your nightmares need a boost.

In the novel, there's a trip to Las Vegas that leads to a disastrous monster invasion.  In the film, this extended sequence is completely gone.  Although the sub-plot's exclusion makes sense, given time and budget restrictions, dammit, it hurts to see that piece yanked out of the puzzle.  In the novel, it's an important sign that David and John are up against something far beyond their level - there's a mortal toll to their fight with the creatures.  In fairness, the film's story functions without the Las Vegas adventure, and non-readers won't know something's missing.

This leaves what is arguably the most vital omission - the loss of an important late-novel twist.  This twist (a satisfying and sad reveal on the page) is hinted at by the opening scene of both film and movie.  The scene hinges on a philosophical riddle: if you first replace the head of an ax, and then later replace the handle, is it the same ax you started out with?  In other words, does full renewal signify the end of something, or is it simply a sign of how transitory existence is?  Think of fixing a car piece by piece until there aren't any old pieces left.  Think of how the human body's fully replaced, on a cellular level, every seven years.  Are you thinking about it?  Confusing, right?  While we're at it, what is the sound of one hand clapping?

With the surprise at the end removed, the opening loses much of its importance and becomes just another piece of weirdness.  The sequence is vivid, for sure (chopping off a zombie's head is always a good way to get the ball rolling), but Coscarelli may have been wise to skip the opening scene altogether and use that time later on, to build a firmer relationship between David and Amy.

They've traveled all the way from Earth to red-tinted Earth.

Beyond all that, the largest problem with the movie is...well...Coscarelli puts on a good show.  He threads Wong's narration in and out of the film without running into information overload.  He draws in a fantastic cast.  Heavy-hitters like Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti chew into smaller roles, while Chase Williamson nails the flippant acceptance of David Wong.  Coscarelli's camera switches effortlessly between frenetic action scenes and sequences of slow-mounting dread.  Some cheap computer effects in the finale notwithstanding, this is a good-looking film, and the style feels just right for the never-quite-serious, never-a-total-joke style of the novel.  There are even a few ties to Coscarelli's Phantasm series, with a black bar as a signpost to other dimensions, and a helmeted hero wielding a flamethrower.

Maybe with time, the changes to the story will seem less upsetting and more understandable, and I suspect non-readers will dig on the film's undeniable ambition and goofy qualities.  I hope they do.  John Dies At the End isn't a bad movie.  It just feels like the Cliff's Notes version of itself.