Johnny Gruesome (2018)

Johnny is a metal head with a cool car who gets suspended after fighting with a kid on the track team who’s bullying him. Later that night Johnny, his girlfriend Karen, his best friend Eric, and his druggy friend Gary go out driving around.  Johnny starts driving way too fast and the others think he’s going to kill them. So Gary grabs him by the neck, which is not a real smart move to do to the driver and then… oh the car safely stops when Karen pulls the emergency break. Trouble averted.

Well other than Gary is a raging lunatic and he pulls Johnny out of the car and strangles him.  After Eric confirms Johnny is dead, he wants to call the police. But Gary says they need to stage it to look like an accident. Karen agrees and eventually Eric goes along with it.  While this is playing out, Johnny’s ghost curses them all and vows revenge.

After the funeral - which Karen didn’t attend- she starts getting calls from Johnny’s number.  The kid who got Johnny suspended ends up dead in the gym.  Eric thinks he sees Johnny in the upstairs window of his home, and teacher Mrs. Crane is attacked by Johnny in her bathroom. She doesn’t mention it to her cop husband because she thinks he won’t believe her. 

The rest of the movie is Johnny stumbling around, the body count increasing, and Eric trying to figure out what to do. I don’t think they ever explained how Johnny is a revenant.  Sometimes the score is piano music which is more attune to a drama, than a horror movie. The makeup sometimes makes Johnny look like a clown.

How does the blind guy know what a corpse smells like? Why didn’t Johnny kill the woman who hit him with her car and took off? Why didn’t Karen block Johnny’s number when she was getting harassing phone calls after his death? Why did they arrest the janitor for the death of the kid in the gym? Did they ever figure out he was innocent? Did Eric have a conversation with Mrs. Crane? He said he lied earlier in the day but I don’t remember him speaking to her, other than maybe at the funeral. And this isn’t the day of the funeral.

Ridiculous dialogue

If I hadn’t pulled the emergency brake, we’d all be dead right now.

He’s haunting us because we killed him. Gary choked Johnny to death. Me and Karen helped. Make it look like an accident.

 I have never been so humiliated in my life, picking up my son from a police station.

I don’t understand you Carol. You’re married to a cop for Christs sake. You know damn well you can’t exhume a corpse without a court order.

Wait, these are the cool kids?

Never put the driver in a choke hold when you’re going 90.

The least observant grave diggers with no peripheral vision

Guy on the left eating the scenery

Yelling “what the hell is wrong with you” to a person you  
drove into is ridiculous

The photo of the cop and his wife is so distracting 

An arm is under his throat similar to how Gary choked Johnny,
plus it looks like two disembodied heads