Ana, a nurse, finishes a long shift at her Milwaukee hospital, then returns to her peaceful suburban home and waiting husband Louis. The next morning the couple is awoken by their neighbor’s zombified daughter entering their room, who they mistake as the victim of an animal attack. The young girl kills Louis, who reanimates as a zombie. Ana flees in her car, before an attempted hijacking sends her crashing into a tree and knocks her out. Accompanying the opening credits, a bleak news-video montage depicts swarms of zombies overwhelming human civilization worldwide.

Upon awaking, Ana meets Kenneth, a police sergeant. They and three others – jack-of-all-trades Michael, petty criminal Andre and his pregnant Russian wife Luda – break into the nearby Crossroads Shopping Mall. Inside, a scuffle with a zombified mall security guard results in Luda getting a minor bite-wound.

They confront three living security guards – C.J., Bart and Terry – and give up their weapons in exchange for refuge. After the group secures the mall, they head to the roof and “meet” another survivor, Andy, who is stranded alone in his gun store, across the mall’s zombie-infested parking lot.

The next day, Terry sides with the new arrivals, C.J. and Bart are disarmed, and the inhabitants of a delivery truck are allowed into the mall, among them the driver, Norma, selfish Steve and bitten Frank and his teen daughter Nicole. The group determines that bites are how the zombies multiply; after Ana and Michael argue about what to do with the rapidly-deteriorating Frank, the man is isolated in a store with guard Kenneth. Michael and Ana achieve an awkward reconciliation, which is interrupted by Kenneth’s shotgun blast as he kills the reanimated Frank.

Though the mall provides many material distractions, and Michael and Ana edge towards a romance, the undead surround the refuge in ever-increasing numbers, eventually filling the parking lot. The mall’s power goes out and C.J., Bart, Michael and Kenneth enter the underground parking garage to turn on the emergency generator. After they meet an unaffected dog, a zombie swarm kills Bart and traps the others in the generator compartment, where they douse the zombies with gasoline and set them ablaze.

Meanwhile, Andre, faced with the fact that Luda’s bite-wound is inexorably killing her, sinks into denial and has Luda tied to a bed. Even as she gives birth, she dies and reanimates. Norma checks on the couple, discovering the zombie-Luda and the deranged Andre. Norma shoots Luda, causing Andre to snap completely; they exchange more gunfire, killing each other. Ana arrives and opens the bundle Andre was clutching to reveal a zombie baby. She pulls her revolver and a single shot rings through the mall.

The remaining survivors decide to flee the mall, fight their way to the local marina, and from there travel out on Steve’s yacht to an island in Lake Michigan. They reinforce two shuttle buses from the parking garage, while chainsaws, propane tanks and other supplies are loaded onboard. Meanwhile, Andy is starving, so the mall survivors strap a pack of food on “Chips”, the dog from the basement, and lower him into the parking lot. Chips reaches the gun-shop untouched, but a zombie gets in as well and badly injures Andy. Nicole, distraught over Chips, takes the delivery truck and barges into the gun store, where she is trapped by a now-zombified Andy.

A team led by Ken head into the sewers. They reach the gun store, kill the zombified Andy, find Nicole and Chips, and stock up on weapons and ammunition. They escape back to the sewers, but the zombies pursue them, and thanks to assigned guard Steve’s negligence, break into the mall, forcing an immediate evacuation. The survivors pile into the buses and smash out into the parking lot, where a propane bomb is used to clear a path through the waiting horde. A horrible accident with a chainsaw splatters blood across the windshield of one bus, causing driver Kenneth to crash. Steve flees the toppled bus and is attacked by a hitchhiking zombie.

The others scramble for the second bus, meeting zombie-Steve on the way. Ana kills him, then lingers to get the boat keys off his corpse, allowing more zombies to catch up with them. Ana flees to the bus, and Michael helps her in. After a struggle, they pull away and speed to the marina, where they crash the bus and dash for the boat. C.J., cornered in the bus, detonates a final propane tank, blowing up the vehicle, more zombies, and himself. The remainder of the group gets on the boat, except for Michael, who was bitten while helping Ana. Ana watches as Michael draws his pistol, places it under his chin, and pulls the trigger. As the closing credits roll, interspersed with short clips from a camcorder found on the boat. They show the boat reaches an island after a grim journey across the lake, only to be met by a new swarm of zombies. The group attempts to flee back to the boat but the film ends with their ultimate fate unknown.

Dawn of the Dead was shot over approximately four months, from late 1977 to early 1978, in the Pennsylvania cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Monroeville.^[2] Its primary location is set in the Monroeville Mall. The film was made on a relatively modest budget estimated at US$650,000, and was a significant box office success for its time, grossing an estimated $55 million worldwide.^[1] Since opening in theaters in 1978, reviews for the film have been nearly unanimously positive.

In addition to three official sequels, the film has spawned numerous parodies and pop culture references. A remake of the movie premiered in the United States on March 19, 2004. Labeled a “re-imagining” of the original film’s concept,^[4] several major themes, including the primary setting in a shopping mall, remain essentially the same. Cultural and film historians read significance into the film’s plot, linking it to critiques of large corporations and American consumerism and of the social decadence and excess going on in America during the late 1970s.

Following the scenario set up in the previous movie, the film depicts the United States of America struck by a pandemic of reanimated human beings, who now have no other desire than to feast on the flesh of the living. As in the previous film, the cause of the plague is not fully understood by the scientific community. Despite desperate efforts by the U.S. Government and local civil authorities to control the situation, society has effectively collapsed and the remaining survivors seek refuge. Although several scenes show rural citizens and military fighting the zombies effectively, cities, with their high populations and close quarters, are essentially deathtraps. Increasingly infrequent television and radio broadcasts imply that chaos is spreading throughout the country.

The film opens in the television studio of the fictional station, WGON in Philadelphia, where confusion reigns. Following some exposition— in which Stephen (David Emge), the station’s traffic helicopter pilot, and his girlfriend Francine (Gaylen Ross) plan to steal the helicopter in order to escape the zombie threat — the plot turns to another of the film’s protagonists, Roger (Scott H. Reiniger), as he and the rest of his SWAT team raid a tenement building because the largely Puerto Rican and black Caribbean residents are ignoring the martial law imposition of delivering the dead over to National Guardsmen and evacuating private dwellings.

The immigrants are slaughtered by the SWAT operatives and their own dead relatives, who emerge from their rooms after being reanimated by the zombie infection. During the raid, Roger meets Peter (Ken Foree), part of another SWAT team, and the two go down to the apartment building’s basement, where they meet a one legged priest who has just given the undead their last rites. They soon find the basement packed full of undead that the living residents had kept from being seized by the National Guard. After the two kill the zombies with shots to the head, Peter suggests they desert their SWAT team and flee the nightmarish city. Late that night, along with Francine and Stephen, they escape Philadelphia in the TV station’s helicopter, with the intention of reaching the safety of the Canadian wilderness. During their long flight north they pass over National Guard troops and redneck vigillantes who are combating zombies out in the countryside. It is shown that while the fighting in the countryside is being won against the zombies, cities have become deathtraps due to their tight quarters. The group stops for fuel where Stephen and Peter are both almost bit on separate occasions. Stephen tries to save Peter but due to his poor marksmanship, he almost kills Peter instead. Roger steps in and saves Peter with his M-16. Peter reprimands Stephen for almost killing him, but he relents and the group takes off.

They eventually arrive at a mall where they decide to stop and look for fuel and supplies. They climb down through the skylights on the roof into a hidden storage room filled with food. They decide to have a look around and see what else is in the mall. They kill a few maintenence personel and clear out the storage area. Stephen finds blueprints and the building’s keys, allowing them access to all of the stores. Due to the fact that zombies can’t run, they simply dash past them and into various stores to equip themselves with tools.

Stephen takes their last weapon and joins them. After Stephen narrowly escapes a small group of the undead, one of the undead moves up the stairs where Francine remains, making his way toward the weaponless Francine. The men in the group trick the undead toward a department store, then escape through an elevator air shaft. They make it back to the hideout in time to save Francine, but in her shock she is immediately skeptical of their new idea to make the mall their own private sanctuary. Despite her objections, they press on. Their plan to make the mall safe for habitation is to block the large acrylic glass entrance doors with semi trucks to keep the undead gathered outside the mall from entering, then destroying the remaining undead inside with ammunition they acquire from the mall’s gun shop. During the blocking of the mall entrances, the impulsive Roger acts recklessly, leading to him being bitten by one of the undead and dooming him — by the rules set in the previous movie — to a slow death and eventual reanimation.

After clearing the mall of its zombie inhabitants, the four settle in. The group indulges their every material desire as the undead paw at the mall entrances. As depicted on infrequent television broadcasts, society beyond those doors continues to collapse. Roger slowly succumbs to the infection, but asks Peter to wait to kill him as he wants to try “not to come back.” He does reanimate, however, and Peter finishes his friend.

As in other zombie films directed by George Romero, the scourge of living death is not simply spread by bites. In Romero’s films, anybody who dies for any reason – heart attack, cancer, gunshots, etc. – will rise as a zombie, unless their brain has been sufficiently destroyed.

The film skips ahead several months. Stephen has taught Francine how to fly the helicopter. Francine was earlier revealed to be pregnant, and her appearance provides a rough estimate of the time that has passed, as she appears to be near the end of the second trimester. By this time, all emergency broadcast transmissions from the outside world have ceased entirely, though Stephen clings to the faint hope of another broadcast. Stricken with boredom, the novelty of their materialistic utopia wears thin.

One night, however, the three survivors refuse to answer a short wave radio call from a malevolent biker gang who know of their presence and are intent on looting. The bikers break into the mall, in the process letting in hundreds of the undead. Angered, Stephen interrupts their plunder and initiates a battle with the bikers. In the end, several bikers and Stephen are bitten by zombies. Peter escapes unscathed. While Francine wants to flee immediately, Peter decides to wait to see if Stephen will return. Stephen quickly bleeds to death from a combination of gunshot wounds and zombie bites. Upon his reanimation, Stephen leads a large group of the undead toward Francine and Peter’s hideout. After killing Stephen, Peter helps Francine escape to the roof but says he does not want to flee. At the last second, Peter decides against suicide and fights off the undead approaching him. He reaches the helicopter as Fran pulls away from the landing pad. The movie ends with the duo facing an uncertain future as they fly away from the mall at dawn in the low-fueled helicopter. As the credits roll, there are multiple shots of the once again zombie-infested mall.

[edit] Alternate ending

The vaguely uplifting finale in the final cut of the film was not what Romero had originally planned. According to the original screenplay, Peter was to shoot himself in the head instead of making a heroic escape. Fran would commit suicide by thrusting her head into the helicopter’s propeller blades. The end credits would run over a shot of the helicopter’s blades turning until the engine winds down, implying that Fran and Peter would not have had enough fuel to escape.^[5] During production it was decided, however, to end the movie on a more hopeful, upbeat note.

Much of the lead-up to the two suicides was left in the film, as Fran stands on the roof doing nothing as zombies approach, and Peter puts a gun to his head, ready to shoot himself with a Derringer before suddenly deciding to live and escape with Fran. While Romero has said the original ending was scrapped before being shot, behind the scenes photos show the original version was at least tested.