“Johnny & Clyde” is the cinematic equivalent of finding a smashed piñata and realizing someone filled it with gravel and old Hot Tamales. It promises a candy-colored horror-heist with demon garnish; it delivers 100 minutes of stale edginess, bargain-bin nihilism, and the kind of dialogue that sounds like it was improvised by a vape cloud. If the title winks at Bonnie and Clyde, the movie blinks both eyes repeatedly and forgets why it entered the room.
On paper, the pitch isn’t terrible: two gleefully murderous lovers plan to rob a casino run by a glamor villain (Megan Fox), only to tangle with a resident demon named Bakwas. On screen, it’s like someone saw “Natural Born Killers,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” and a Redbox rack at 2 a.m., then tried to glue them together with Axe body spray. The result is sticky, loud, and mysteriously scentless where a story should be.
Let’s start with Johnny and Clyde themselves, played by Avan Jogia and Ajani Russell. They are introduced via an edgy montage: gunplay, giggles, and the kind of crime spree that thinks the word “spree” is doing most of the work. Unfortunately, the pair have the chemistry of two separate Bluetooth speakers playing different podcasts. Jogia’s Johnny is supposed to be a pretty sociopath with a poet’s soul; instead he’s a shrug in skinny jeans. Russell’s Clyde has more spark—there are glimpses of a feral charisma—but the script gives her mostly cackles and cutaways. They’re written like Tumblr posts from 2012: “We’re not like other killers; we like, love murder and each other.” You can almost hear the black nail polish chipping.
Megan Fox, meanwhile, shows up as Alana Hart, a casino owner who dresses like a Bond villain’s Instagram influencer cousin. She glides through rooms with two leather-clad minions named Honey and Pot (subtlety be damned) and clearly understands the assignment: campy menace, droll line readings, cheekbones that can file paperwork. Alas, the movie keeps asking her to be both the brain and the brawn and then gives her neither. Alana monologues. She purrs. She wields a mystical rock that controls a demon like it’s an Apple AirTag for Hell. But what does she actually do? Mostly stand under good lighting while the plot paces in circles. Fox has presence; the film has presents—shiny props, silly costumes—and none of them unwrap into anything.
And then there’s Bakwas, the big bad. Imagine a spirit with the personality of a foreclosure notice. Is he scary? Occasionally, when the lights are low and the machetes fly. Is he interesting? Only if you’ve never met a practical effect before. The lore arrives pre-flattened: Alana makes a deal with a cult, clutches a rock, the demon murders on command—until, wow, it doesn’t. There’s a late-game twist meant to suggest cosmic irony; it feels more like the screenplay forgot who was in charge and made a decision by coin toss.
Speaking of tosses, the tone keeps flipping between smirking grindhouse and dour revenge thriller. We get a former sheriff (Armen Garo) whose whole personality is “I’m grieving and angry and I brought a shotgun.” He stalks the killers, gets in their way, and then gets in the movie’s way, because every time the story threatens to develop momentum, we detour into his sorrow and a side quest with a bail bondsman named One Time. The film seems convinced this adds grit. It mostly adds minutes.
The heist mechanics are where a horror-heist can shine—planning, gadgetry, a moral sinkhole opening under the floor. Here, the crew (Butcher, Baker, Candlestick—yes, really) spend their prep time shoveling drugs into their faces like a dare and dying by avoidable stupidity. It’s meant to be blackly comic; it plays like a PSA about workplace safety. Doors blow up. People blow up. Tension does not. The casino’s security chief (Tyson Ritter) gets an actual arc, the kind a better movie would reserve for someone whose name is on the poster. He realizes he’s a patsy, tries to do the right thing, and earns the lone sincere beat—then the film swats him like a gnat so we can return to giggling sociopaths and the demon’s union lunch break.
Stylistically, director Tom DeNucci chases that neon-noir gloss: slow-motion struts, purple gels, needle drops that think they’re cooler than they are. But the coverage is weirdly TV-flat, the editing allergic to rhythm, and the action staging muddled. When chaos erupts, you don’t feel dread so much as confusion. Bodies fall; you squint to remember who they were and whether they mattered. (They didn’t.) The humor rarely lands because punchlines are treated like revelations and revelations land like punchlines. A stuttering gas-station attendant gets tormented, shot, and used as an emblem of our villains’ stylish cruelty. It’s ugly without being affecting, like watching someone proclaim their edge while carefully coloring within the lines.
If there’s a beating heart here—besides the literal ones Bakwas scoops out—it’s the idea that Alana is clearing the chessboard, eliminating witnesses, using chaos as cover to skip town. That’s a strategy! That’s motive! And yet the movie can’t resist tripping over its own demon leash. By the time Bakwas turns on everyone (surprise?), the only thing left to root for is the end credits. The script wants to say something about control—who wields it, who thinks they do, who never had a chance—but the metaphor got distracted by a bondage harness and never found its way back.
Let’s talk performances on the margins. Bai Ling swoops in as Zhang, an assassin who seems to be starring in a much stranger, possibly better movie. She radiates chaos with one arched eyebrow and turns every entrance into a mini-event. Then she’s dispatched, as is the film’s fleeting sense of mischief. Robert LaSardo leans into Candlestick’s paranoid ramblings; he’s at least awake. Several others are technically present. The demon suit probably gives one of the top three performances.
The dialogue often sounds like first drafts no one had the heart to rewrite. “We’re going to the cash room,” someone announces, as though we haven’t been told that every five minutes. “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” another snarls, as though they’ve never seen a movie before. When sparks do fly, it’s because an actor slid a line into camp and the editor mercifully stayed out of the way.
Is there anything to admire? A few frames. A few glints of mean humor. The notion—fleeting, fragile—that a horror-heist could use a demon as a literalized “house always wins” mechanism. The problem is the movie treats its big idea like decor instead of engine. Compare that to films that actually marry genre elements—say, vampires in a bank, ghosts in a safe room—and you’ll see the difference: the supernatural should complicate the heist, not replace it with a shrug.
By the time we reach the finale, with Alana believing she still holds the leash and Bakwas auditioning for cardiology school, the film seems to be aiming for cruel irony. It hits “Tuesday.” The would-be iconography—beating heart in hand, smirking demon, fallen lovers—would pop on a poster. On a screen, it’s a collage of endings from better tales.
A final note of gallows optimism: if you’re studying how not to blend tones, here’s a helpful case study. If you’re a film student writing a paper titled “When Edgy Isn’t,” congratulations—primary source secured. If you’re simply a viewer hoping for trashy fun, there are moments (a hallway gag, a split-second sight joke, Bai Ling’s wardrobe) that twitch. But the movie is mostly the cinematic version of a bad tattoo: loud, permanent, and destined to be explained away at parties.
“Johnny & Clyde” wants to be a cult item. It will be—among the cult of people who enjoy yelling, “No, the other script!” at their televisions. The house wins, the demon grins, and the audience loses 100 minutes they’ll never see again. On the plus side, it’s a perfect date night if your relationship needs a common enemy.
