The movie begins with an introduction to a documentary called The
Death of Death. The movie then shows a view from a cameraman and a news
reporter, reporting on a murder of a local family. The reporter and
newswoman chat while the ambulance crew load the deceased bodies.
Suddenly, one of the bodies moves and an ambulance worker attempts to
resuscitate the person[who?]
when they are bitten. Another zombie approaches the news crew and
police open fire on them but are ineffective at killing the zombies.
The news lady is bitten on the neck while the cameraman films. The
scene cuts to a group of young film studies students from the University of Pittsburgh:
- Jason
- Ridley
- Francine
- Mary
- Debra
- Tony
- Gordo
- Eliot
who are in the woods making their own horror film about a mummy along with their faculty advisor, Andrew Maxwell, when they hear on the radio the news of apparent mass-rioting and mass murder. Soon, these reports include cannibalism and the fact that the recently deceased are inexplicably waking and walking.
Ridley and Francine decide to leave the group, while Jason, who wants to film the events documentary-style,
heads to the dormitory of his girlfriend Debra Monahan. Debra shows
surprisingly good sense when we first see her, because when she opens
her door, she is armed with a heavy candlestick, as where most people
in this type of film would just open the door. When she cannot contact
her family they travel in Mary's RV to the house of Debra's parents in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
While driving her RV, Mary sees a car accident and runs over a highway
patrolman and three other zombies trying to escape from them. The group
stops and, after running over an undead state trooper, and then having
to endure Tony declaring that she just killed real, living people, Mary
tries to commit suicide shooting herself in the head with a pistol. Her
friends take her to a hospital where they realize that the dead are
returning to life as zombies and they need to fight to survive while
traveling to Debra's parents' house. On their way the fuel line of the
RV is cut but they are assisted by a deaf Amish
man named Samuel. The real surprise here is Tracy, who reveals that she
is familiar with auto repair because of her father's profession. Just
before escaping Samuel is bitten and takes his own life by stabbing
himself with a scythe through his head, but also taking the zombie with
him. They later pass a city and are stopped by an armed gang. They try
to barter with the men, who are better armed and supplied. The men are
survivors of the attack on their city; everyone else left. The leader
is a member of the National Guard,
and does not believe the military will help. They rest in the city for
a while, and edit their videos. There is a small argument amongst Jason
and Debra, who does not share his belief in the need for videos. Jason
sees the recordings as a necessity to show the world what was really
happening. His uploaded videos reach 72,000 hits in eight minutes. They
also find out that Debra's family were camping for the extent of the
crisis, and is just now on their way home. The National Guard survivors
gear up after one of their members had a heart attack and dies, then
goes missing. They mistakenly kill one of their own and the chase the
zombie into the fuel supply area, killing it with a canister of
Hydrochloric acid. The students resupply and leave for Debra's house.
They get a video stream from Tokyo from a survivor until they lose
signal. The radio towers have become unreliable. The only dependable
source of information is from the internet, added by bloggers.
When they arrive at Debra's house they assume that her family are
still missing but find the reanimated corpses of her mother and brother
who they fight off. They escape the house and decide to travel back to
Ridley's mansion. Members of the real National Guard stop and rob them.
The leader of the unit enters the RV and forces Jason at point blank to
turn off his camera while they rob the RV. They steal all but the
weapons (the bow and a shotgun) and run off shooting their rifles in the air.
The group watches video feed from a zombie hunting group. The group
enter a building and find an old couple, who warn them not to come in.
The group enters anyway and one of their members is attacked by a
zombie. They kill three of them then the three uninjured men debate
over whether or not to kill the couple for not telling them about their
family members. The injured member kills the old couple before taking
his own life.
They arrive at Ridley's mansion to an unlocked front door and find
it abandoned. A bookcase in the mansion opens to reveal a Panic Room
where a delusional Ridley stumbles out. He brings the group on a grand
tour and then explains that his father was the first to turn, followed
by a few of the servants and his mother and that Francine was attacked
by his butler. He invites Debra and Tony to follow him outside to where
he buried his family and the servants. It turns out that he did not
bury them, but just put them in the pool. Ridley locks the two in the
pool room and runs away to the house where he transforms and begins to
hunt the group. The professor hears the commotion and runs into the
panic room with the shotgun. Ridley attacks Tracy and Jason at the RV,
before Jason distracts Ridley long enough for Tracy to knock him out.
She then runs to the RV and drives away, angry at Jason for filming
rather than helping. Ridley travels back to the house and pushes
another member of the group into a bathtub; this member becomes
electrocuted. The survivors go back to the panic room for a while, but
Ridley returns and infects Jason. The professor cuts through Ridley's
head with a sword and then Debra shoots Jason. Debra watches the video
on Jason's camera and sees his last message, about his happiness to be
documenting the events, apparently filmed right before his attack.
Debra decides to continue the video.
In the morning they awake to see the staff of the mansion who were
in the pool have made their way out and were breaking into the mansion.
The professor, Debra, and Tony lock themselves in the panic room.
Inside Debra watches the last thing Jason downloaded. Two men had
formed a zombie hunting group and had tied three zombies to trees as
targets. The last one was a woman hanging from a tree by her hair. They
shot her in the lower part of her head, allowing the rest of the body
to fall without causing the brain to be destroyed; the eyes can clearly
be seen to be still moving. After seeing this, Debra wonders whether
people are worth saving.