I could make a movie and say it’s like “Casablanca meets The Godfather” but that doesn’t mean it will garner any awards. While I can see why they are making the comparison to Pulp Fiction and Zombieland, it does not mean that this movie is on par with either.
DIEner revolves around a small group of people trapped in a diner with a derranged, remorseless, and overly talkative psychopath. Ken kills with out a care in the world. From his own admission he has done this “many times”. Rob and Kathy are a couple that stopped in after a rather obvious argument over their relationship. Ken, having killed the entire staff at the diner waits on them. Just as he is about to kill the couple, a police officer shows up. As he is waiting on the cop, Duke, the cook that Ken killed earlier comes back to life. This is only the beginning of their issues.
The opening of the movie is very well done, and probably the best scene in the entire film. This movie is very VERY dialog driven. Some of the dialog is actually very well written and even the timing is well thought out. The problem is that none of the actors really can carry the scene. It just becomes a really well written play acted out by a B-list of actors. As the majority of the story is told directly from Ken’s mouth, we are told that it’s possible that everyone that Ken has killed in the past has started to come back to life. However there is no reason given to that, and they don’t really back it up with much. There were a couple of scenes where Rob and Kathy knock out Ken and he, apparently, is dreaming. The dreams don’t explain anything with his character. I thought maybe they would, but it only ended up feeling like filler.
The actor that portrays Ken wants so badly that to be Edward Norton that he lets everything else go to waste because of it. At one point he shows his anger toward Rob and Kathy, and I laughed out loud because I thought he was joking. Sadly, he was not. While I slightly enjoyed the dark humor in the movie, it was at points far beyond subtle and felt forced. It was a good idea, but it just wasn’t planned out well enough.
After a decent opening scene this movie really fell off. It’s disappointing that a movie that had the promise to be something different in the zombie genre just wasn’t able to pull it off. I am sitting here trying to come up with a snarky diner quip to round out this review, and can’t think of a single one. That’s better than putting one up like the one on the poster. When you literally have to ask “Get It?” on your poster, you have already revealed that a title based on a pun isn’t funny.
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