A shaggy-dog story with restless leg syndrome, “John Dies at the End” may not amount to much, but there’s no denying its sheer entertainment value. Mixing slacker laughs with inter-dimensional creepy-crawlies, it’s a zing-packed horror comedy that coasts by on sheer bravado, twisted wit and endless adrenaline.
Cult writer-director Don Coscarelli (“Bubba Ho-Tep,” “The Beastmaster,” “Phantasm”) drolly adapts the novel by David Wong (a pen name for Jason Pargin), and even if the story’s rules and logic seem to be ever-shifting, it never feels like the movie is cheating or pulling the rug out. We’re set up for a lunatic funhouse of a plot, and that’s exactly what we get.