Saturday, January 21, 2012

Reader's Choice: Die-Ner (Get It?)


I really don't know what to say about this, honestly. I know Nick Jobe pushed this movie and kept telling me I need to see it for the longest time now. So now that I did, what did I think about it?

The movie is about a serial killer named Ken, who shows up at a truck stop diner (GET IT?!) one night and kills the waitress and the cook. As he's about to leave, a couple named Rob and Kathy show up. Ken has to pretend to be a waiter and take their order. And he's about to kill them when a cop shows up. The cop is sort of suspicious of Ken's story about being new and wonders where the cook is, when the cook shows up. The same cook that Ken killed earlier.

Ken is baffled but comes to an immediate solution: zombies. Actually, him coming to this conclusion happened rather quickly. Most zombie movies (actually all zombies movie) the people either take forever to realize they're zombies or act like zombies never existed before. I always wonder what it's like to live in a world where zombie movies aren't made. Clearly in the world of "Die-Ner" they do cause Ken knew what to do immediately. But then there's a twist: cutting off the head or shooting them in the head doesn't work.

Ah, those kind of zombies.

Anyway, the cook bites the cop and Ken holds the couple at gun point while he acts like Ryan Reynolds. And he looks like Edward Norton. So try to wrap your head around that. So Ken is trying to figure out what to do and the couple is trying to escape. They manage to hit Ken in the head and knock him out. While Ken is having some weird dream about his Mom (it was really pointless and just put in to fill up on time) Rob and Kathy...DON'T tie him up.

....THE FUCK?!?!?! You don't need to be a cop to figure out that if some guy who is holding you at gun point gets knocked out the first thing you need to do is immobilize him! Jesus!!

So naturally he wakes up, pulls out a knife, cuts off Rob's finger, then ties the couple up. Ken goes outside and remembers that he killed someone else: the truck driver who gave him a ride. Turns out he's a zombie too.

You know what's fun about zombie movies? You can have them without explaining why zombies are there. I mean they're just zombies. Maybe there was no more room in hell. Maybe all zombie movies are happening at the exact same time (I just blew someone's mind with that). Maybe a comet flew by. I don't know and you don't need to know either.

Anyway, the cop eventually dies and while Ken waits for him to become a zombie, the couple gets loose, knock Ken out again, and they learn their lesson and tie him up this time. Hooray. Too bad when they get outside, they find Ken took something out of their engine so they can't escape.

Oh and more zombies come out of nowhere and attack. At first I thought maybe the people Ken killed are just coming back to life to go after Ken and that would've made an interesting premise. But I doubt Ken killed this many people in this exact city, so this is a zombie movie just to be a zombie movie.

Anyway, Rob is bitten and killed and Kathy is the most useless human being cause she doesn't know any to do anything (drive trucks, kill people, cook, etc) and unties Ken so he can drive the truck out. Then the cop's deputy shows up right when it looks like Kathy is actually the serial killer. And Ken isn't helping much.

But the deputy is eaten, Kathy eventually gets eaten, and Ken gets eaten in Capt. Rhodes style. And the movie just kinda ends with a truck drivin' zombie getting in his truck. I guess.

So did I like the movie? It was ok. Nothing special. I kinda had a love/hate relationship with Ken. I wish the story went a different way than just "well, here's zombies. Deal with it." Maybe I was expecting it to be more funny (The title is a lame pun, followed by "Get It?") but I was a bit let down. But overall, it wasn't a bad movie. Lord knows I've seen worse zombie movies, especially this month.

Ugh.



-Jason

6 comments:

Nick said...

I think you TOTALLY missed the reason I loved this movie. It's a thinking movie. Very existential. What do you do if you're a serial killer and your victims don't stay dead? And then there's the meta aspect of it all. And the dialogue is excellent. The opening bit where you just have the waitress talking for like 10 minutes and then gets killed is fantastic.

I think perhaps you went into the movie thinking it was something it wasn't, or maybe I wasn't clear on why it needed to be seen.

Jason Soto said...

I dunno, I didn't get any of that out of it. I think even the people who made the movie didn't put that much thought into it. I think they said "Hey let's make a zombie movie and have a serial killer in it." But that's just what I got out of it.
-Jason

Nick said...

I think you need to slow down on the meds. There are entire SECTIONS of the movie where he talks about the existential crisis he's having.

Kev D. said...

I was probably harsher to this movie then I needed to be when I reviewed it, but I really didn't enjoy it, nor see any real merit.

I need to care about the characters in a movie, or at the very least LIKE them... especially in a zombie movie.

Great post.

Dylan said...

"META META META META META!!!"

That was my impression of Nick Jobe. :P

I have nothing else to say other than "I will probably never watch this, especially if Jason didn't really like it."

Jason Soto said...

Kev: Thanks! Yeah, I was amused by the serial killer guy (I already forgot his name) but other than that, I was just waiting to see some zombie action and what was gonna happen next.

Dylan: Yeah, Nick hasn't looked at me the same since this review. I think I let him down.
-Jason