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Dawn of the Dead
The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon that reanimates recently-dead human beings as flesh-eating zombies. At the dawn of the crisis, it has been reported that millions of people have died and reanimated. Despite the government's best efforts, social order is collapsing. While rural communities have natural barriers, such as Johnstown, and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, urban centers have descended into chaos.
At WGON-TV, a television studio in Philadelphia, traffic reporter Stephen Andrews and his pregnant girlfriend, producer Francine Parker, are planning to steal the station's helicopter to escape the city. Across town, Philadelphia Police Department SWAT officer Roger DeMarco and his team raid a low-income housing project, whose mostly black and Latino tenants are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to the National Guard. The tenants and the officers exchange gunfire as the officers try to gain entry, and indiscriminate attacks by racist officers and the reanimated dead exacerbate the resulting chaos. Roger encounters an officer from another unit, Peter Washington. As the SWAT team successfully dispatch the zombies, a disillusioned Roger suggests that he and Peter desert and join up with Stephen (who is Roger's friend) in escaping the city.
Roger and Peter join Fran and Stephen at a police dock and then leave Philadelphia in a stolen WGON-TV news helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, and decide to remain there since there is plenty of food, medicine, and all kinds of consumables. Roger, Peter and Stephen camouflage the entrance to the stairwell leading to their safe room and block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead from penetrating. This involves driving through crowds of zombies, who attack the trucks. Roger becomes reckless and is soon bitten by the zombies.
After clearing the mall of zombies, the group builds a hidden safe room as a fallback in case of future attacks, before settling into a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies; when he reanimates, Peter shoots him in the head and buries his body in the mall. Months later, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed. Now isolated, the three load some supplies into the helicopter, in case they might need to leave suddenly. Fran gets Stephen to teach her how to fly in case he is killed or incapacitated.
A nomadic biker gang sees the helicopter in flight and breaks into the mall, destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies back inside. Despite having a fallback plan should the mall be attacked, Stephen, consumed by territorial rage, takes matters into his own hands by firing on the looters, beginning a protracted battle. On their way out, straggling bikers are overwhelmed and eaten by the zombies. Stephen tries to hide in the elevator shaft, but gets shot and subsequently mauled by roaming zombies. When Stephen reanimates, he instinctively returns to the safe room and leads the undead to Fran and Peter. Peter kills the undead Stephen while Fran escapes to the roof. Peter, not wanting to leave, locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide. When the zombies burst in, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Fran. Having escaped and low on fuel, the two then fly away in the helicopter to an uncertain future.