Trama

When the unburied dead return to life and seek human victims, seven refugees shelter in a house in the Pennsylvanian countryside.

A remake of George Romero's 1968 black-and-white classic that begins in a cemetery, as the recently-dead return to life - from an unknown cause - and attack the living as their prey. One woman escapes the frightening zombies to take refuge with others in a farmhouse, as every cadaver for miles around hungers for their flesh. Will they make it through the night...that the dead came back to life?—Derek

Johnny (Bill Moseley) and Barbara (Patricia Tallman) are visiting their mother's grave in a cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. During their visit, Barbara sees a man sobbing and mummering "I'm sorry," when out of nowhere, Barbara is attacked by a zombie. Her brother comes to defend her, but is killed. Barbara retreats to Johnny's Mercedes where said zombie and a freshly reanimated corpse try to attack her. Barbara runs for help and finds a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. Then, Ben (Tony Todd) shows up to the house with a crow bar, saying there are these creatures everywhere. The two proceed to clear the house of zombies and begin barricading the doors and windows.

However, they discover that they aren't alone in the house. Married couple Harry and Helen Cooper (Tom Towles and McKee Anderson), their daughter Sarah (Heather Mazur) , and teenage couple Tom Landry and Judy Rose Larson (William Butler and Katie Finneran) are all survivors who had been hiding in the cellar. What follows are the attempts by the survivors to defend the house under siege from the undead. The group is left divided over what their next course of action should be. Harry believes everyone should retreat to the cellar and barricade the door to wait for the authorities. Ben thinks the cellar is a "death trap" and that they would be better served fortifying the house, which at least has alternate escape routes, and Barbara suggests that they should all leave the house on foot while they still can after she notices that the zombies are very slow and that they can just "walk right past them". An argument between Ben and Harry leaves the Coopers in the basement tending to their daughter, who was bitten by a zombie and is near death, and the remaining members of the group upstairs to continue their work reinforcing the doors and windows. However, the loud sound of hammers hitting the nails into the wood attracts more and more zombies to the house.

A plan is ultimately devised to escape using Ben's truck, which is out of fuel. Ben, who lived on the farm prior to the epidemic, states that there is a gas pump on the property but it is locked. A search of a corpse on the property produces a set of keys. Judy Rose, Tom, and Ben proceed up the hill toward the gas pump but their plan begins to unravel when Ben falls from the back of the truck and is left to defend himself against the undead. After discovering the key to the gas pump is not among the bunch they brought with them, Tom attempts to shoot the lock off. The falling gasoline is ignited, trailing after them in the truck. The resulting explosion kills both Tom and Judy.

Ben returns to the house to find things beginning to dissolve into chaos. Harry has wrestled Barbara's gun away from her and is now armed. Unbeknownst to the survivors upstairs, the Coopers' daughter Sarah has died from the bite on her arm and has become a zombie; she attacks and bites her distraught mother, who does not defend herself. When Sarah makes her way upstairs, she triggers a shootout between her father, who is trying to protect her, and Ben and Barbara, who are trying to protect themselves. Both Ben and Harry are badly wounded. Harry retreats upstairs to the attic, while Ben makes his way to the cellar. Barbara leaves the house, now being overrun by the undead, in an attempt to find help. As Ben retreats to the cellar, Helen Cooper has reanimated and Ben is forced to shoot her. He then starts to lose his sanity, and loses it completely after finding the gas pump keys, which were in the cellar the entire time.

Barbara eventually joins a group of zombie hunting locals who are attempting to clear the area of the undead. Back at their base the following morning, the hunters are having cock fights with the zombies as well as hanging the undead on nooses and messing with them (similar to how the hunters used zombies as passtime target practice in the original Dawn of the Dead). She returns with them to the farmhouse the next day to find Ben has died of his wounds and reanimated. He seems to recognize Barbara, but is shot as quickly as he emerges from the cellar. Harry emerges from the attic alive, but Barbara kills him for his actions the other night. She then turns to leave the house, telling the vigilantes they have "another one for the fire." The film ends as Barbara watches a stack of corpses being set on fire.