When his family is slaughtered, young Martin (Connor Paolo) is taken under the wing of a grizzled, wayward vampire hunter, called Mister (Nick Damici).

They continue to move north, avoiding major thoroughfares that have been seized by The Brotherhood, a fundamentalist militia headed by such fanatics as Jebedia Loven (Michael Cerveris), who interprets the plague as God's will at work.

Coming across a survivors' roadhouse, they pick up another traveler, the pregnant Belle (Danielle Harris), who hopes to make it to New Eden to have her child.

Later, they also pick up Willie (Sean Nelson), a former Marine, who is found hiding in a workmen's toilet having been abandoned as vampire bait by The Brotherhood.

They manage to avoid dangerous areas for some time; while sleeping at an abandoned auto junk yard, they are attacked by 'berserkers', the oldest and strongest kind of vampire.

After several days of walking through the wilderness, they take shelter in a broken-down school bus turned camper and notice in the morning that Willie is missing.

Despite their best efforts, Belle is taken from their campsite during the night and Mister and Martin find her in an abandoned silo the following day, wrapped in barbed wire and bitten.

The duo head north again, acquiring a pickup truck and they meet Peggy, who lives alone in an abandoned restaurant and who picks off approaching vampires using a crossbow.

[4][6] Stake Land was originally envisioned by Mickle and Damici, who had worked together on the film Mulberry Street in 2006, as a web series about a vampire hunter that they could produce cheaply, on the weekends.

[1] Mickle and Damici specifically wanted to include happy moments and co-operation in the script, as they felt that many post-Apocalyptic films were unremittingly grey.

[10] The long take in the survivor's settlement, with the vampires being dropped by the brotherhood, was not originally planned that way but evolved as time limitations forced the scene into a single day's shooting.

[12] The film received fairly positive reviews with Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a 75% "fresh" rating from 60 reviews; the consensus states: "Though the genre is well worn at this point, director Jim Mickle focuses on strong characterization and eerie atmosphere to craft an effective apocalyptic vampire chiller that also manages to pack a mean punch.

[19] However, Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York rated it one out of five stars and wrote, "You really shouldn't see Stake Land—even if you are in the mood for lax, uninspired end-of-the-world-with-vampires thrills.