Ken is a personable, talkative serial killer who has just dispatched the late-night skeleton crew at an out-of-the-way diner. When a bickering young couple and a local cop turn up and start to smell a rat, Ken is ready to add to the body count. But the bodies in the freezer aren't content to stay dead, and things quickly get out of control.
When you approach a movie with a title like this one, you don't tend to expect subtlety. But Die-ner's grim opening sequence (in a series of close-ups showing Ken cleaning up the traces of his work) tips you off that this is a horror movie before it's anything else. The low-key comedy proceeds mostly from the well-drawn characters' reactions to the situation. The young couple is faced with a double threat: they can't flee the zombies because of the psycho killer holding them hostage. Josh Grote (in his first film performance) does a great job as Ken, who is less terrified than utterly fascinated by the zombie rising. As a connoisseur of death, he's intrigued by the idea of un-death. "I kill people all the time," he says, "but they've never come back before." Louisiana actor Larry Purtell is hilarious as the tired, ineffectual sheriff, who gets taken out of the game pretty quickly and spends most of the movie groaning on the floor.
The film is fairly light on the gore, but there is one well-done zombie bite and a bit of hand trauma. That aside, it's a clever take on the zombie and serial killer genres, informed by lots of older movies but never beholden to them. They even manage to pull off the "kill me if I become one of them" exchange without embarrassing themselves. I think if more people see this, it has the potential to generate some buzz. If a DVD were available (hopefully with a different title), I might be interested in seeing it again.
P.S. Lead actor Josh Grote appears to be in no way related to Edward Norton, despite looking and sounding exactly like him.