Aspiring distance runner Max Goenecke is thrilled to have been admitted into the New York City Marathon and travels to the city a few days early to enjoy some of its charms.
Though Max has been training most of the year and is confident in his pace, he is not the most coordinated fellow in his day-to-day life, and the hustle and bustle of the city prove challenging for his inherent clumsiness.
While trying to get a bacon, egg and cheese bagel for breakfast at a bodega he mistakenly grabs one that has been placed on the shop’s ofrenda by the proprietor and eats it. Later, while seeking out a chopped cheese for lunch, he ends up tripping over a rat coming out of a sewer grate and careens headfirst into another ofrenda, toppling it over much to the bodega owner’s ire. By the end of his three days to enjoy the city’s cuisine before race weekend he has disturbed, disrupted, or outright destroyed no less than a dozen of the altars across several boroughs.
As he joins the throngs of attendees in the early hours Sunday morning he notices the full moon overhead and also some strange phenomena among his fellow runners- some of them look quite run-down: dirty, gaunt, a few even have ghastly wounds and exposed bones. When Max tries to have an on-site medic take a look he is shocked to find the medic doesn’t seem to see the afflicted runners, asking if Max maybe drank a little too much tequila for Dia de los Muertos yesterday. Annoyed, Max begins explaining that of course he didn’t drink the day before the marathon but one of the haggard individuals suddenly grabs him, demanding recompense for the bagel sandwich he took from his son’s bodega a few days earlier. As the starter pistol is fired Max realizes he is not just running to say he completed the marathon, but for his very life, as the pissed-off denizens of the land of the dead have hung around to make him pay for ruining their annual celebration.
Zack Snyder, in affiliation with Netflix and several kilos of cocaine, directs this newest entry in his “of the Dead” franchise, which plays out in real time as Max struggles to outrun his PB and hangry Latino ghosts.