- A quiet suburban town is overrun by vampires! The once idyllic portrait of a typical American family now hosts spectacles of carnage behind every picket fence as the neighbors prowl the streets feasting on the dead and dying.
- It is Curtis Armstrong's birthday, and the Armstrong family is preparing to celebrate. Curtis's wife Sandy [Alison Dian Miller] and teenage daughter Heather [Sarah Horvath] are hanging HAPPY BIRTHDAY signs. Curtis Jr [Rwaling Curtis] and his pregnant wife Ellen [Claire Mills] have just arrived. Only older daughter Jen [Janet Martin] and Curtis [Joel King] himself have yet to be heard from. Jen lives with her lover Lisa [Meghan Stansfield] and wants little or nothing to do with her family. Curtis Sr is a slumlord and had to run to Compton to check on one of his rental properties and to chase away some squatters. Unfortunately for the Armstrongs, those squatters turn out to be two vampires from Bosnia.
Meanwhile, Rakeem [Del Wills] is cruising around town with his two friends Dwayne [Gene Samuel] and O-Dog [Derrick Wayne Smith]. O-Dog sees Rakeem's sister Tisha [Kobina Wright] with her boyfriend Mos-Eisley [Lanre Idewu], so Rakeem stops to pick up Tisha and bring her home. As brother and sister argue, they are suddenly interrupted when local drug dealer Cinque [Noah Knight] shows up wanting his money from Mos. Some heated words are exchanged, gunshots are fired, and everyone scatters. Cinque phones Heather Armstrong, his girlfriend, and informs her that he's bringing over ten bags of "green" for her to hide.
A little later, Rakeem and his friends are hanging out on a sidewalk near the warehouse owned by Curtis Armstrong. Rakeem hates Armstrong. Rakeem believes that Armstrong's negligence caused a fire that killed his little brother Donny. Suddenly, a scream is heard. The gang rushes into the alley and sees a dead guy with no head. Rumor has it that he was from Bosnia. When Rakeem learns that Heather Armstrong is "kicking" with Cinque and that O-Dog knows where the Armstrongs live, Rakeem decides to pay the Armstrongs a visit and extract his revenge. Tisha, Dwayne, O-Dog, and friend Lewis [T'Shaun Laren] go along.
Meanwhile at the Armstrong's house, all the lights in the neighborhood have suddenly gone dark, and Curtis has finally come home, but he's acting strangely. Sandy wonders whether he's been drinking. Curtis allows Sandy and Junior to taste what's in his thermos (it's not booze), then he orders Sandy to go get Ellen. Curtis puts his hand on Ellen's bulging stomach, and she immediately begins to bleed. When Heather goes out to the garage to cop a smoke, Curtis follows and bites her neck. Then he takes Ellen out in a field and pulls the baby out of her. Junior notices a bag his dad left on the bed and opens it to find a severed head. The horror has begun.
Just as Jen and Lisa arrive, Rakeem and his buddies pull up near the Armstrong house. Suspecting that the boys are up to no good, two neighborhood watchers force them out of the car and hold them at gunpoint. While they wait for the cops, a scream suddenly pierces the dark and the gun accidentally fires, hitting Dwayne in the chest. The boys and Tisha run to the Armstrong house for shelter. Bad move. Sandy is throwing up blood and turning vampire. Sandy goes into Heather's room and finds Heather chewing on Cinque. The blood he drank from the thermos has also turned Junior into a vampire.
Just then, Curtis Sr comes back from his sojourn with Ellen. He grabs Dwayne and makes Junior drink from him. The rest of the movie revolves around biting, getting bitten, trying to escape getting bitten, and asking to be bitten. Everyone in the neighborhood seems to be involved, from the two neighborhood watch guys to the crazy alcoholic stripper with whom Curtis was having an affair. Apparently, there are three rules with the types of vampires depicted in the film. One is that a person must drink vampire blood in order to turn into one...just getting bitten doesn't work. Second is that a vampire can only be killed by cutting out the heart...just stabbing, staking, or beheading alone doesn't seem to do it. Finally, these vampires eat the flesh as well as drink the blood of their victims.
About 45 minutes later, towards the end of the movie, when everyone in the neighborhood (and perhaps the town) has become either a vampire or a victim, Jen, Rakeem, and Tisha seem to have a lucid period in which they realize the depths to which they have descended and know that there is no hope. After stabbing, beheading, and de-hearting their loved ones, Rakeem pulls off the blanket covering a skylight. The rising sun streams in and destroys them. [Synopsis by bj_kuehl]]
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