Siblings Barbara and Johnny are making their yearly trip to their parents’ grave when Johnny starts teasing an unamused Barbara that “they’re coming to get you.” He even points out a man nearby, only for him to get closer and be revealed to be covered in blood. He violently attacks Johnny and fatally bashes his head against a tombstone, and Barbara tries to escape but in her panic quickly crashes their car and has to run on foot.
Barbara sees several other people behaving the same way, and it becomes clear they’re actually dead people from the graveyard brought back as zombies. She finds a farmhouse only to discover a gruesome body inside, which proves the last straw for her willpower. Luckily, she’s soon joined by new arrival Ben, who shares his story about running down zombies with a truck before ending up at the farmhouse where he ran out of gas. Ben quickly gets frustrated by Barbara’s near-catatonic helplessness as he sets about boarding up the windows, but it then turns out there are more people hiding in the basement, husband and wife Harry and Helen, and younger couple Tom and Judy. Harry and Helen’s daughter Karen is also in the basement, having gotten extremely sick after being bitten by a zombie.
Harry proves to be incredibly irritable and unwilling to let anyone else take the lead of the group, especially Ben, and insists they all go back to the basement where they can easily defend the one entrance. Ben counters that they’d be trapped down there if enough zombies attack, and they should stay on the ground floor. The argument is interrupted when the group finds a television and turn on the news, which reveals that the zombie attacks are happening all over the country and various sanctuaries have been set up.
Ben now wants to head to the nearest sanctuary, with Harry still wanting to stay in the basement. Ben, Tom, and Judy make a risky run out to a fuel pump to refill the truck, but Tom proves so inept at it that he sets the truck on fire, with him and Judy being killed when it blows up. Ben is left surrounded by zombies and barely makes it back to the farmhouse where Harry tries to lock him out, getting several punches to the face when Ben does make it back in.
The lights go out and the zombies make their strongest attack yet on the house. Barbara is finally driven to get back up and help, but soon sees Johnny among the zombies and is so distracted that she’s pulled outside to her apparent death. In the basement, Karen turns into a zombie from her bite and kills her mother with a trowel, Helen unable to raise a hand to defend herself. Harry turns on Ben and tries to kill him, to which Ben blasts him with a shotgun causing him to fall into the basement. He goes down to discover Karen eating her father’s corpse, and kills her in disgust before having to also put down Harry and Helen when they also start to rise again. He ironically becomes the sole survivor of the night by staying in the basement just like Harry wanted.
As the sun rises, a posse approaches the farmhouse, easily taking care of all the zombies in the area once they’ve gotten organized. Ben goes to the window to investigate the noise, but unfortunately he’s mistaken for a zombie and killed, and his body is piled onto a fire with the others.
