Francesco Dellamorte [Rupert Everett] is the cemetery caretaker in Buffalora, a quiet Italian town where death never truly rests. He lives in a ramshackle house on the cemetery grounds, kept company by his mentally disabled assistant Gnaghi [François Hadji-Lazaro]. The two are outsiders, and gossip swirls that Dellamorte is impotent. He fills his days with odd hobbies—reading outdated telephone directories and crossing out the names of the dead, and toying with a skull-shaped puzzle—while Gnaghi can only say one word: “Gna.”
The cemetery gate bears a Latin inscription, RESURRECTURIS (“For those who will rise again”), and the town experiences an unsettling routine: some buried residents rise as aggressive undead, or “Returners,” within seven nights of death. Dellamorte dutifully eliminates these creatures to protect Buffalora, but the town’s New Mayor Civardi, Pietro Genuardi, is more concerned with reelection than with proper investigation. An imperfect, intimate bond forms with his only confidant, Franco [Anton Alexander], a municipal clerk who never files papers for help, explaining, “It’s easier just to shoot them.”
At a funeral, Dellamorte meets Magda [Barbara Cupisti], a young widow who loves his stories about the ossuary. A fragile romance blooms, but death shadows them: while they lie beside her late husband’s grave, the undead partner rises and bites her. The coroner’s report calls it a heart attack, yet Dellamorte suspects something darker. He shoots the reanimated Magda, only to be haunted by doubt and a creeping sense that he has crossed a line from which there is no return.
Gnaghi falls for the mayor’s teenage daughter, Valentina [Fabiana Formica], and their innocent romance persists even after tragedy: Valentina is decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Undeterred, Gnaghi digs up her head and resumes the courtship. The mayor witnesses this bond, and Valentina uses her undead status to bite and kill him, forcing Dellamorte to shoot her again. The young widow returns, prompting Dellamorte to question whether his earlier kill truly ended her life. Death itself looms over Buffalora, and a chilling message echoes: > Stop killing the dead.
Dellamorte then encounters two more women who resemble his lost love. The first is an assistant to the new mayor; she reveals a fear of sexual penetration, and Dellamorte seeks a drastic resolution from the town’s doctor, who refuses and instead administers a temporary impotence injection. The woman, after being assaulted by her employer and falling for him, plans to marry the man and discard the cemetery man.
As his grip on reality loosens, Dellamorte roams the night and lashes out at the townspeople who ridiculed him for years. He meets a third manifestation of the woman he loves, and they sleep together, only to learn she is a prostitute. He kills her and two other women by setting their house ablaze. In the aftermath, Franco [Anton Alexander] is accused of the murders after killing his wife and child and attempts suicide. Dellamorte visits Franco in the hospital; while by Franco’s bed, he casually murders a nun, a nurse, and a doctor. Franco claims not to recognize him, and the confession goes unheard.
Gnaghi and Dellamorte pack up their car and leave Buffalora, but danger follows. Gnaghi’s head is injured when Dellamorte slams on the brakes, and at the road’s edge the pavement plunges into a chasm. Dellamorte contemplates ending them both with two dumdum bullets, but cannot pull the trigger. Gnaghi wakes, drops the gun, and asks to be taken home, speaking clearly for the first time. Dellamorte replies with a quiet, almost affectionate, “Gna.” As the credits roll, the camera pulls back to reveal the two men standing in a snowglobe, the world outside their small circle seemingly sealed away.
