#38 -- DIEner (2010)

Director: Patrick Horvath

Rating: 3 / 5

What can you expect with a title like that? Honestly, not much. But this movie quite surprised me. I was expecting zero budget, and crap all around. But what I got was, while still low-budget, quite an entertaining experience. 

It was at this point that I knew this movie was going to rock my socks off. Was I right? Not exactly, but I was still entertained. First we have a waitress, Rose, telling her life story to a complete stranger. They agree that there's no one left in the world that can be trusted, and he proves his point by killing her and the diner's sole chef. A troubled married couple enters, and he plans to kill them as well. But, thankfully, a cop named Duke enters and saves the day - for a moment, at least. Ken, the killer, pretends to be a waiter for a while, but when Fred (chef) and Rose emerge from the freezer they've been stored in, as flesh-eating zombies, his secret comes out. Duke is bitten by one of the flesh-eaters, but he lasts quite a long time - enough time to tell us that discovering his wife was pregnant made him want to blow his brains out. 

When Fred is discovered, Ken decides it will be a good idea to duct tape him to the floor. Ha! Of course, being a serial killer and all, he's got a bag full of duct tape and rope. He sticks Fred with nails, hoping to kill him for good. But these zombies are strong as hell (even though they don't appear to be half as strong as normal zombies). He ties Rose up to a coat rack. Now, if this isn't the stupidest approach to detaining zombies, then I don't know what is. It's humorous in its stupidity, though.

Rob and Kathi (the married couple) keep knocking Ken in the head, trying to keep him from killing them. Yes, in a diner full of zombies, they're afraid of Ken. And rightfully so, because the zombies are actually quite inadequate. 

Ken eventually gets tired of getting smashed in the head, so he ties Rob and Kathi to a couple stools. He cuts off Rob's pinkie finger as collateral, and tells him that he'll get it back when he decides to cooperate. It's stored in a cup full of ice. Each time Ken is knocked out, we see flashbacks of him as a child, apparently playing hide-and-seek with an older woman - possibly his mother or a babysitter. I'm not sure what this was supposed to reveal, because it was just Ken walking around a house looking confused. And therefore, I was confused. 

As I've said, the zombies were inadequate. And the focus did not lie on them completely - it was more on the relationship between killer and victims. And Ken was hilarious. He was extremely smart, which I can assume is why he was so batshit. As zombies come in through the back door and attack Ken, he realizes that he actually killed most of them. As they're tearing away at his flesh, he is screaming "I regret nothing! Nothing!" Ha!

Rob is killed while trying to crank up a semi-truck, and the  movie ends with us assuming that Kathi has also been eaten. Yep. Here we have a zombie movie where the zombies win. It's a risky move, and not all that bad. But that is partly my reason for giving this one three stars instead of four. I wanted to see a big explosive KILL-THE-ZOMBIES ending. That's what we like, to see just how they're going to defeat them this time. But this time, they just couldn't get it done.

I did not like this movie because of the zombies, because, quite honestly, they sucked. I like this movie solely because of Ken, the hilarious serial killer. I actually found myself rooting for him, and I was quite heartbroken when he was killed. This movie was not incredible in any sense, but it - mainly Ken - was entertaining. So, just watch it for him. 

Have I mentioned that I loved Ken?

Anyways, this rated well for me because I was pleasantly surprised by it. I expected something completely shitty, and what I got was something quite good. I didn't love it, but it was worth my time.