Ana Clark (played by Sarah Polley) is the main protagonist of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. She worked as a nurse and lived in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin with her husband Luis. When the undead outbreak occurred, Ana was completely unaware of it until it was literally right at her door. After a difficult shift at the hospital one evening, she returned home to her husband without incident. However, she forgot to close the front door properly after getting home, and the next morning she and Luis awoke to find that their next-door neighbour Vivian had entered the house and came up to their bedroom. The little girl's nightgown was covered in blood and it appeared that her lips had been torn off her face. When Luis went over to the girl to check her injuries, Vivian bit him in the neck, causing him to bleed out and die. Ana was able to throw the zombified Vivian back out into the hall and lock the bedroom door, then tried to call for an ambulance. Of course, with the zombie outbreak in progress, emergency services had been stretched to their limit and were unable to respond.
As Ana lamented over the lack of response from the other end of the phone, Luis suddenly got up and let out a ferocious shriek before lunging at Ana. Ana locked herself in the bathroom before calling out her husband's name, but Luis didn't answer back and attempted to break down the bathroom door. Ana managed to escape by crawling through the bathroom window, but saw utter pandemonium when she got outside as people were running and dying all around her. Ana got to her car and managed to drive away even as the creature that was once her husband chased after her, though the zombie Luis soon ceased his pursuit after spotting and pouncing on another bystander.
Ana fled down the highway in her car, but was soon blindsided by a runaway van and her car was sent rolling off the road and into the nearby woods. Ana was rendered unconscious in the crash, later awakening to find a cop called Kenneth Hall aiming a shotgun at her, unsure if she was a zombie due to her blood-soaked clothes. When Ana spoke, Kenneth lowered his weapon and led her out of the brush onto another road where they met with three more survivors: Michael, Andre and Luda. Together, the five survivors headed to the nearby Crossroads Shopping Mall where they planned to barricade themselves until help eventually came.
After entering the mall, Ana and the others were confronted by C.J., Bart and Terry, three of the mall's security guards who had claimed the mall as their own shelter and weren't willing to share. Michael was able to convince C.J. to allow the others to stay, though C.J. was hesitant as he felt that letting other survivors inside would invite trouble. Not long after this, a truck arrived at the mall carrying other survivors and C.J. tried to stop Ana and the others from letting them in. However, Michael and Kenneth beat him down and then locked him and Bart up in one of the stores, letting Terry remain free as he was willing to help them. The new arrivals were brought inside, though some of them were wounded. Ana examined an unknown woman who soon died, but reanimated seconds after death. Shortly after the woman was put down, Ana came to the realisation that the undead infection was spread through bites.
Over the course of several days, the survivors enjoyed the comforts of the mall as they waited for rescue with Ana acting as the group's resident medic and morale officer. As time passed, however, some of the survivors died and it became more and more apparent that no rescue was coming. The group decided they were going to leave the mall and head for the nearby marina where they would take a boat and sail to an island, suspecting it would be safe due to being isolated from the mainland. Gathering what supplies they could, the group outfitted a pair of buses in the mall's garage with mesh and sheet metal as well as decking them out with weapons to plough through the enormous zombie horde flooding the street.
The survivors left the mall in their armoured buses, but the sheer volume of undead made it difficult to get through. Though the buses got through the initial blockade of zombies by blowing up a propane tank, the horde was still vast and pursued the buses relentlessly. One of the buses was overturned, resulting in the deaths of Steve Marcus, Glen and Monica. The survivors of the crash boarded the remaining bus and continued on to the marina, though it also crashed just before reaching the pier. Ana and most of the other survivors got out and ran to the pier while a wounded C.J. stayed behind, blowing up the bus and a sizable portion of the horde. The fire left by the explosion held the rest of the horde back while Ana, Kenneth, Terry and Nicole boarded Steve's boat. Ana urged Michael to come with them, but Michael revealed that he had been bitten following the crash and would eventually turn. Heartbroken, Ana gave Michael a kiss goodbye before boarding the boat. As the boat left port, Ana watched as Michael raised a gun to his head and shot himself.
Unknown Fate[]
The survivors' escape on the water is shown in a series of scenes that appear throughout the end credits. Ana, Kenneth, Terry and Nicole spent days on the water, exhausting their supplies by the time they got to the island which they believed would be their safe haven. Unfortunately, the island was no safer than the mainland as it too was infested with zombies. Seconds after the survivors arrive, a swarm of undead emerge from the forest and attack. Ana and the others open fire at the horde as they retreat back to the boat, but it remains unknown if any of them escaped or if they all died.