One idyllic August afternoon, siblings Barbara and Johnny visit their mother's grave in a remote cemetery in rural Pennsylvania.
Shortly after, a man named Ben (who fled Evans City) arrives and helps Barbara dispatch the zombies.
The two quickly form a bond and clear the house of the undead and begin barricading the doors and windows as night falls.
They soon discover other survivors holed up in the cellar: a man named Harry Cooper; his wife Helen; their daughter Sarah, who was bitten by a zombie and has fallen seriously ill; and teenage lovers Tom Bitner and Judy Rose Larson.
A scuffle ensues that leaves the Coopers in the basement to tend to Sarah, while the other survivors continue reinforcing the doors and windows upstairs.
The group devises a plan to escape using Ben's truck, which is out of fuel, by refueling at a locked gas pump nearby.
They find a set of keys in Uncle Rege's corpse (the farm's owner) and proceed to drive up the hill toward the gas pump, but their plan begins to unravel when Ben falls from the bed of the truck and is left to defend himself.
Ben gradually goes into shock, and after realizing the gas pump key has been in the cellar the entire time, he laughs mindlessly at the irony before dying from his injuries.
She eventually joins a group of countryside locals who are clearing the area of the undead, and awakens the next day in a makeshift camp surrounded by the safety of the media and townspeople, led by Sheriff McClelland.
When Harry emerges from the attic alive, Barbara kills him in a fit of rage and retribution for causing Ben's death, and turns to leave the house, telling the vigilantes they have "another one for the fire."
Night of the Living Dead (1968) director and co-writer George A. Romero said that the remake came about in part because of issues over profits of the original film.
Romero's production company, Image Ten, eventually won the lawsuit, but the distributor went out of business before they could collect any money.
[2] To keep the effects realistic, they used as inspiration a real autopsy, forensic pathology textbooks, and Nazi death camp footage.
[8] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly rated it D+ and wrote, "In the history of bad ideas, George Romero's decision to produce a color remake of his disturbingly frenzied 1968 zombiefest Night of the Living Dead has to rank right up there with New Coke...The original Night was taken by some to be a statement about the Vietnam War; this one isn’t about anything larger than Romero’s desire to make a buck.
[14] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "While this Night hasn't the chilling, almost cinema-verite credibility of the original, it is certainly a well-sustained entertainment".
The critical consensus reads: "Night of the Living Dead doesn't quite reinvent the original's narrative, but its sleek action and amplified gore turn it into a worthy horror showcase.
"[21] Reviewing the Twilight Time Blu-ray, Adam Tyner of DVD Talk rated it 3.5/5 stars and wrote, "We'll never get a chance to see the remake that Tom Savini set out to direct.