The Dead Hate the Living! 1999

The film opens with Dr. Eibon recording a chilling confession: he has revived the dead and intends to join them. Soon after, a zombie breaches his lab, delivering a grim omen about the dangers of playing with forces humanity isn’t meant to tame. About a month later, a small crew of aspiring filmmakers arrives at an abandoned hospital to shoot their horror project. Leading the group is the on-set director David, joined by actors Shelly Poe and Eric, along with FX artists Paul and Marcus, who hope the derelict building will provide genuine terror for their film.

As the cameras click, tension tightens when Nina Poe, Shelly’s sister, storms onto the set furious that Shelly has claimed her role. Her disruptive presence unsettles the crew and adds pressure to an already tight schedule, especially for the gofer Topaz, who bears the brunt of Nina’s demands. Filming slows as the team argues about tone, props, and effects, the real world creeping into their fictional nightmare.

While exploring the eerie corridors, the crew stumbles upon Eibon’s laboratory—and the corpse that lies sealed inside a strange coffin. David decides to repurpose the body as a prop, a choice that horrifies Shelly and drives her to quit the project. The situation escalates when, during a take, Eric accidentally awakens Eibon through the coffin’s eerie purple glow, ripping open a vortex that spawns two zombies. The upshot is brutal: Eric is killed by the reanimated threats and then inexplicably revived by Eibon, revealing that the scientist’s obsession with resurrection stems from the loss of his beloved wife, Ellie.

The undead begin to pick off the crew one by one, and the body count climbs—eventually leaving only Topaz, [David], and Paul standing. Topaz is captured and dragged back to Eibon’s lair after she kills a zombie named Ellie, a grim echo of the scientist’s memories. In a desperate gambit, Paul and David disguise themselves as zombies to slip into the fortress of the dead, though Paul is killed in the attempt. David manages to free Topaz and, with a sudden surge of resolve, destroys Eibon.

Yet escape proves not to be a simple exit from danger. As the trio limps toward what they think is safety, they discover the hospital has become a gateway to another dimension—one inhabited by the dead themselves, a world stitched together by the very experiments that began the catastrophe. What began as a straightforward haunted-house shoot ends in an unsettling boundary between life and afterlife, where every choice echoes with consequences and the living must come to terms with forces that refuse to stay buried.