Vague Visages’ Queens of the Dead review contains minor spoilers. Tina Romero’s 2025 movie features Jaquel Spivey, Katy O’Brian and Quincy Dunn-Baker. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.
Tina Romero, the daughter of horror icon George A. Romero, makes her highly-anticipated feature directorial debut with Queens of the Dead, a movie that pays homage to her father’s legacy while paving its own staunchly queer path forward. Over the years, we’ve watched unlucky characters battle zombie beavers, zombie Nazis and zombie punks, but this is the first time zombie drag queens have taken center stage. With a stacked cast filled with recognizable queer actors — from the likes of Pose (2018-21), Bros (2022), Fire Island (2022) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024), and a predominantly queer crew working behind the scenes too, alongside the best use of Scissor Sisters’ “Let’s Have a Kiki” maybe ever — there’s no denying that Queens of the Dead is queer excellence in all its messy glory.
Kicking things off with a delightfully silly prologue involving a gay hook-up app and an ill-fated rendezvous in a church back room, Romero immediately establishes the tone of her movie, which is decidedly less serious than her father’s celebrated filmography. The action takes place predominantly in a struggling Brooklyn gay club run by the harried but dedicated Dre (a luminous Katy O’Brian), who, on the day in question, puts out several fires at once while also dealing with the incoming apocalypse. Queens of the Dead is not limited by its location; instead, Romero’s debut feature feels locally rooted in a way that provides real color and depth, emphasizing how hopeless the situation is once the central group essentially has to make a run for it through the streets.
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Romero’s debut runs on queer chaos, making her movie kind of anxiety-inducing, even before zombies descend on the club. Dre just tries to keep their head above water, especially when the headliner drops out at the last minute, leaving Sam (Jaquel Spivey) to fill the spot, which also means facing up to a devastating incident that occurred years before and still haunts him to this day. Sam works at the local hospital with Dre’s wife, Lizzy (the always welcome Riki Lindhome), who’s just found out she’s pregnant — a plot point that complicates matters even further. It’s a helluva lot to contend with, and to Romero and her co-screenwriter Erin Judge’s immense credit, they give everybody plenty to do as the situation escalates. Although each performer shines in their own right, Nina West — a fan favorite of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-) — steals the show by playing against type as a total diva. She’s an absolute hoot, whether delivering scathing reads or reacting to a zombie biting through her sizeable butt pads.
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O’Brian is also incredibly well cast in Queens of the Dead, proving once again that she’s a star. Even when Dre isn’t necessarily the center of the drama, the lead reacts and emotes to consistently draw eyes her way. The protagonist’s playful tension with clueless brother-in-law Barry (scene-stealer Quincy Dunn-Baker as a straight white male) provides many of the movie’s biggest laughs, as he routinely tries and fails to do and say the right thing in a queer safe space. The two actors have an easy rapport, though O’Brian comfortably shares the screen with every member of the cast, from a bartender played by Cheyenne Jackson to Spivey’s Sam, who’s arguably afforded the most character development (aside from Barry). Queens of the Dead has a relatively low body count, but everybody is believably in danger, as though anyone could be next, so it doesn’t feel like the audience is being short-changed.
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As expected from a Romero production, the gore in Queens of the Dead is on-point, practical and splattery. There are zombie rats, a zombie baby — in a sequence that stands in hilariously stark contrast to a similar moment in the dour 2025 franchise film 28 Years Later — and a dismembered arm with a mobile phone still attached to it. Social media addiction is presented as an affliction akin to being infected with whatever mysterious virus has taken hold of New York City — or, maybe they’re one and the same, since Romero’s uniquely bluish-green-hued creatures continue to use their phones, even once they’ve been zombified. Otherwise, there’s plenty to differentiate the zombies as drag queens, or even simply queer, including a hand bursting through a door that’s adorned with fake nails, subverting a well-worn trope of the sub-genre. On the other hand, heels and a curling iron serve as surprisingly useful makeshift weapons.
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Queens of the Dead is about celebrating queer joy, even in the harshest circumstances, which is best exemplified in a lively yet surprisingly poignant dance sequence right when things get really hairy. So, even the film’s most violent moments have a glittery sheen to them. Romero is still developing her own style, but the burgeoning filmmaker isn’t aping her famous father so much as she’s borrowing from and building on his impressive legacy by putting her own spin on the subgenre he made his own. Aside from a winning Tom Savini cameo, there’s nothing in Queens of the Dead to suggest that Romero is leaning too heavily on paying homage to what’s come before, which is impressive (even when your dad isn’t considered the father of the zombie movie). The director’s enjoyable debut feature is as endearingly chaotic as its colorful cast of characters, and it’s loaded with knowing one-liners like “drag is not life or death.” Queens of the Dead demonstrates what fans already know: drag queens truly can do it all.
Queens of the Dead releases theatrically on October 24, 2025.
Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.
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Categories: 2020s, 2025 Film Reviews, 2025 Horror Reviews, Comedy, Featured, Film, Horror, Movies