The Nightmare Before Christmas: John Dies At The End

John Dies At The End is based on a book. I've never read that book. I don't recognise these people. Where am I?

Live reactions:

So we start off with a retelling of My Grandfather's Axe. Complete with neo-Nazi zombie. That's a new one.
Andy Wong is strung out and babbling about side effects.
Paul Giamatti appears across from him. I suspect his character (Arnie) is a hallucination.
Flashback? Cell phone call from John. John dies at the end, so we're not at the end yet.
Oh, hey, Clancy Brown. I loved him in Starship Troopers.
John tells him in code to grab his kit, some beers, and come over.
His kit appears to consist of a lot of weapons.
Some pretty girl came to John and Andy for help because her dead boyfriend is harassing her. I suspect she's evil.
Her basement freezer is filled with meat and body parts, and there's a distinct lack of ghost. Told you.
And now she turned into a pile of snakes. Hello, snakes!
Now the frozen meatstuffs have reformed into a flesh golem.
The flesh golem thinks they're Clancy Brown (must be blind, Clancy Brown is way more studly than these two losers) and they conveniently have him on their speed dial.
My man Clancy just dispelled a homunculus over the phone. Rock on.
Interlude with Arnie. Andy displays some psychic ability and we learn that Arnie has some fucked up dreams.
John had a band. They're not particularly good.
Magical Jamaican. He does the same dream reading thing Andy does later.
The Jamaican talks about nonlinear time and some other guff.
Amy's missing dog is named Bark Lee. I don't think I like Amy.
John is on a bad trip, going on about something being after them. Andy can't see anything, though the camera does show a spiderish thing to the audience briefly. It might be real.
Now John's talking about time.
The Jamaican gave John a drug. Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
Phone call from John, while John is sitting across from Andy.
That's the second time someone's called Andy "David". He said later that he changed his name, so I guess that's why. It seems an unnecessary thing.
This is why we don't carry drug syringes in our pockets, Andy. They stab us.
Eeeeeeeeee! Doug Jones! With his own face!
John died. And this isn't the end. I'm so confused.
Arnie again. Invisible monster that you can only see from the right vantage point (physically and mentally.)
Another call from John. After fighting a nonexistent cop who seems not to be held together particularly well, Andy buys a bratwurst so he can talk to John on that instead of his cell phone.
Andy is seeming less sane by the second.
That's okay, after he gets a second dose of the drug the existent (probably) cop shows up and is crazy too.
Bark Lee saves Andy from a burning building, after we learn that Andy saved himself from being shot by going back in time to the shell's manufacture.
Then some dude named White, who is evidently possessed by a swarming thing that hatched from the Jamaican, shows up and kidnaps Andy after being shot several times.
Existent detective torches White, but turns out to be possessed by the same thing. Which is weird.
Also gross, because he pops like a balloon when it hatches from him.
John, Andy, and Amy manage to torch existent detective and their friend who was also possessed.
They return to the ghost door, which Amy the amputee opens with her phantom limb. That's actually kind of cool.
Inside is Doug Jones again. And Clancy Brown.
Something something Korrock.
Now we're in an alternate world peopled by breasts. Breasted by peoples. Breasts.
Let's try that again.
Now we're in an alternate world where the people mostly don't seem to have heard of clothes.
They have, however, heard of creepy-ass masks.
And they have a temple with pictures of Dave and John on the walls.
Divergent timelines. They had a genius who did creepy stuff with biological engineering.
The day he died one of his creations (Korrock, a biological computer) achieved self-awareness and, as is inevitably the case, became a tyrannical despot and killed everyone who opposed him.
The remaining people are dedicated to the cause of Korrock and wish to spread him as far as possible, including to alternate universes.
Bark Lee sacrifices himself to kill Korrock. Or at least give him a weird trip. It's not very clear.
Arnie turns out to be the ghost of a dead black reporter, who disappears once Andy stops hallucinating that he's pasty white Paul Giamatti.
This final scene is incredibly annoying. It's intercut with the credits for no reason whatsoever.
John and Andy go through another portal and find a world that needs saving from weird leech things. I don't think they're going to help.
This is the end, and John doesn't die. I'm so confused.

Post-movie postmortem: Huh. That was an experience. It seems to mostly hang together and form a coherent narrative, though the movie is not particularly interested in providing explanations. I think...I need to watch it again.

Four stars.