A comet is passing by Earth. The last time the comet was by Earth was when the dinosaurs were wiped out. It’s just before Christmas and everyone is having a party for the passing comet.
Catherine Mary Stewart works at a movie theatre. While everyone is watching the comet. Stewart spends the night with her boyfriend, the projectionist, in the steel lined projection booth. Meanwhile Stewart’s younger sister (Kelli Maroney) has a fight with their step-mom and spends the night in the steel lined shed. In the morning everyone is gone. There’s nothing left by piles of clothes and red dust. The sky has a red haze to it.
Stewart’s boyfriend goes outside and is quickly killed by a zombie. Some people who weren’t directly exposed to the comet have become zombies, except they talk, move quickly and use weapons. Stewart fights the zombie and escapes. She goes home where she finds her sister. Together they go to a radio station looking for other people. They find the station is on automatic but a truck driver (Robert Beltran) has survived and also went to the station.
While at the station they talk over the air prompting surviving government researchers to contact them. Beltran decides to see if his family survived. The girls decide to go shopping where they run into some zombie stock boys. The researchers have sent a helicopter to collect the survivors but they’re up to something sinister. They end up taking Stewart to their compound and Maroney and Beltran have to rescue her.
This was one of the first movies to carry the PG-13 rating so the zombie violence is pretty mild but as far as end of the world movies go, this one is pretty fun.
