They follow Joel (Vicente), who is a zombie activist who runs ZAG (Zombie Advocacy Group) and repeats the slogan "We're here, we're dead, get used to it!" They also follow Ivan (Basis), who works on the night shift at a convenience store and skateboards. They find Judy (Nakamura), who works at a natural food company as a customer service rep and insists she's "just like everyone else" except for having rotting flesh and turning colors. And Lisa (Wilson), a florist who specializes in funeral arrangements, seems a bit on edge as she tries to find out who she was and how she died.

The zombies say they only want to be accepted like everyone else, but they run into discrimination, poor wages and other sorts of troubles. When the documentarians get limited access into the zombies-only annual retreat in the desert, called Live Dead, they stumble across more than they could have imagined.

Doc of the dead

Grace Lee is known for her self-absorbed The Grace Lee Project, and she sticks herself into this documentary a lot, much as she did in that film. She and Solomon argue and bicker in front of the camera, and it all becomes part of the documentary.

The zombies, except for Ivan, are almost boring in their everyday lives (though Ivan puts out a really cool zombie 'zine). The experts on zombie culture and history are appropriately tongue-in-cheek and work for places like the Center for the Living Deceased. There's a science section that explains the virus that turns people into zombies and Post Mortem Mobility Syndrome (known as PMMS).

The zombies are decent in their portrayals and seem to have more life in them than most of the crew and human experts shown in the pseudo-doc. It seems like a lot of this may have been ad-libbed, and that makes it even more funny, even though the joke wears thin rather quickly. The joke is clever when the zombies are compared to the homeless, or AIDS patients, or immigrants, or any other disenfranchised poor group of people, but as with a lot of documentaries, the viewer begins to think, "Yeah, all right, I get it, so what?"

The climax obviously centers around the Burning Man-like outdoor festival, and when the documentarians witness some of the secret rituals there, things take a dark turn. Not a lot of the turns are very surprising; in fact, they're almost expected, because it's impossible to trust a zombie—but perhaps that's just a stereotype that we all have.