When Tina Romero set out to make a zombie movie, she knew she’d follow some of her father’s rules for the undead.
First, the zombies would be slow and shuffling, unlike the running ghouls of “28 Days Later” or the fast-moving hordes of “World War Z.”
Second, to kill them, you’d have to kill their brain.
Third, a single bite from a zombie would turn you into one.
In that way, Romero would carry on the family legacy of making films with shambling, flesh-eating menaces.
But the director’s New Jersey-filmed feature debut, “Queens of the Dead,” wouldn’t exactly be a movie in the mold of her famous dad.
George A. Romero was known as the father of zombie cinema. He died in 2017, at 77.
His zombies generally couldn’t be found on dance floors in sky-high heels, big hair and glittering ensembles.
That’s just one ever-so-fabulous scene in Tina Romero’s “zom-com.” Her film, inhabited by glorious drag queens and a crew of club kids, is a story dedicated to zingy one-liners and laughs as much as social commentary.
“Queens of the Dead,” in theaters Friday (Oct. 24), is a celebration of the queer community and a heartfelt tribute to chosen family.
“Yes, this is a big gay zombie movie made very much by queer people for queer people,” Romero, 42, tells NJ Advance Media.
“But I hope that everyone feels invited to this party, and that people who maybe are unfamiliar with drag, unfamiliar with the queer scene, can come to this film and find empathy and find a place of relation, and have a good time. Because I do think there’s more common ground amongst us all than people realize.”
Director Tina Romero at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Queens of the Dead.” Though the story is set in Brooklyn, she filmed most of the movie in New Jersey.Theo Wargo | Getty ImagesNew Jersey becomes Brooklyn … and other transformations
Romero’s zombie apocalypse happens as characters are frantically making last-minute arrangements for a Brooklyn warehouse party.
They go from being crushed by the low turnout at their event to sheltering in place when the undead start attacking people all over New York.
Much of the film unfolds in the contained space of the party venue, where tensions rise as zombies start to drag themselves in, threatening the drag queens inside.
“We have the transformation of drag with the transformation of human to zombie, the identity transformation,” Romero says. “When you’re putting drag and zombie in the same room, there’s a motif there.”
The New York director knows queer party culture and dance floors inside and out.
A zombie apocalypse descends on New York in the middle of a warehouse party. Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
Romero, who studied film at Wellesley College and New York University, is also a DJ known as DJ TRx.
“Queens of the Dead” may be set in Brooklyn, but Romero filmed most of the action in New Jersey. She calls the state “New Hollywood.”
She found her “Brooklyn warehouse” for the film at The Art Factory in Paterson, a now shuttered wedding venue and home for artists inside a former textile mill.
“The space was really perfect for us because it’s an old warehouse where they used to make nautical rope,” Romero says.
“It had so much authentic grunge to it that we were like ‘this could feel like Brooklyn. This could feel like Bushwick,’ which is a very industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn, and big warehouse parties all around. They were really willing to let us run around the entire place and we were able to make exterior and interior locations out of it.”
Tina Romero, also known as DJ TRx, knows a thing or two about the party scene.Sean Zanni | Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
The Independent Film Company/Shudder movie, which filmed in June and July of 2024, also came to CareWell Health Medical Center in East Orange and Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood. The film spent $2.1 million in Jersey and received an $825,000 tax credit, per the state Economic Development Authority.
“We shot most of the movie at this one location,” Romero says of The Art Factory. “We had one exterior day in Brooklyn where we did shoot in Bushwick … but the rest of it was all Jersey, baby.”
Margaret Cho and coming out to George Romero
One of the stars of the film is New Jersey’s own Jaquel Spivey.
Spivey, an alum of Montclair High School and 2022 Tony nominee for “A Strange Loop,” starred in the Jersey-filmed “Mean Girls” movie musical released in 2024.
In “Queens of the Dead,” Spivey plays Sam, a former drag queen who works in a hospital, having fled the limelight after a bad experience.
Joining Spivey in the cast are Katy O’Brian (“Love Lies Bleeding”); Jack Haven (“I Saw The TV Glow”); “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Nina West, aka Andrew Levitt; Tomás Matos (“Fire Island”); and Eve Lindley (“National Anthem”).
Margaret Cho plays Pops, who has a plan to escape the zombies.Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
The ensemble cast also includes Riki Lindhome (“Wednesday”), Dominique Jackson (“Pose”), Quincy Dunn-Baker (“A House of Dynamite,” also filmed in New Jersey), Cheyenne Jackson (“American Horror Story”), Julie J, Shaunette Renée Wilson (“Black Panther”) and Becca Blackwell (“Survival of the Thickest”).
As zombie chaos envelops the city, actor-comedian Margaret Cho makes a grand entrance on an electric scooter, with a posse in tow.
“I’m so psyched that she said yes to this,” Romero says. “Margaret Cho is very meaningful to me on a few levels.
“When I came out to my dad, I was in college … and he was very cool about it. He was like ‘men are a–holes anyway. That’s great.’ And a couple months later, he booked us tickets to go see Margaret Cho on tour in Pittsburgh. I felt at the time that this was his way of saying ‘I accept you, I’m gonna take you to see Margaret Cho because she’s a very out and proud bisexual,’ and she did not shy from talking about queer s—, even back then. And it was always very meaningful to me.
“He took me to see that, and he took me to see a stage production of ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch.’ And in these ways, I felt like he was saying, like, ‘hey kid, it’s OK. It’s OK that you’re gay. I see you, and it’s OK.’ And so when I had the opportunity to work with (Cho) now, on this level, it felt so special.”
Cho being in the film means a lot to Romero because of a treasured memory from when she came out to her father.Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
Cho plays Pops, an uber-confident taskmaster with a plan for escaping to zombie-free territory. In a very New York moment, the character encounters some zombified rats.
“We had three live rats on set,” Romero says. “They were the cutest rats I’ve ever seen. My producers were like ‘we got the small ones because the big ones tend to be bitey.’ And I was like ‘Oh, OK.’”
The problem was that the cute rats needed to be bloodthirsty rats (filmmakers made them look scary during the editing process).
“They were so cute, and they just crawled up on her shoulder and, like, nuzzled her,” Romero says of Cho. “She was hilarious and amazing and she was down for the rats. She’s an animal lover … She was totally chill to have some live rats crawling all over her.”
George A. Romero with zombie friends at the premiere of his film “Land of the Dead” in 2005. Ethan Miller | Getty ImagesDoomscrolling for the dead
As the zombie invasion begins, the mayor of the city addresses concerned citizens on a news broadcast.
“We’ve all heard the rumors but let me be perfectly clear,” he says. “This is not a George Romero movie. There is no such thing as a zombie, OK?”
With that, his Oval Office Zoom background glitches, revealing him to be partying with cocaine.
Still, he was right — this is not a George Romero movie.
It’s not Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead‚” the iconic 1968 film that sent decades of zombie movies into popular culture, nor is it the director’s “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), “Day of the Dead” (1985) or any of the other films that would follow in his zombie franchise.
However, Tina Romero, who co-wrote “Queens of the Dead” with Erin Judge, did take another cue from her father.
“I can’t be my dad’s kid without trying to say some sh– with this movie,” she says.
“We got out the whiteboard and we were like ‘OK, what social commentaries are we going to try to make? What is the dark sh– we wanna dig into?’ Top of the board was phone addiction, social media, device addiction.”
A scene from George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).Continental Distributing
In the past, zombie movies have critiqued our consume-at-all-costs culture, among other subjects. In “Queens of the Dead,” both the living and the dead are fixated on phones, united in their status as social media zombies.
Wannabe influencers spend their lives chasing likes and verification badges. Then there are actual zombies who hold and stare at phones by habit — not even death has rid them of the compulsion.
Talk about doomscrolling.
“Decaying while they hit refresh,” the drag queen Ginsey (West) says in the movie.
Zombies with phones become less of a threat, because like living scrollers, they are distracted and therefore somewhat incapacitated.
“They are still responding to their devices, which I do think my dad would have approved of, because it is what’s happening outside on these streets,” Romero says.
One zombie munches on a severed arm in the film. Even the hand of this arm still grips a cell phone. Divorced of its owner, the screen flashes on.
Katy O’Brian and Jack Haven in “Queens of the Dead.”Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
“I am part of that straddle generation, I know what life was like before a smartphone, and the way my brain has changed since having one is so freaky to me,” Romero says. “Just being on the subway and opening Candy Crush without making the choice to do so, I’m like ‘Oh my God, what’s happening to my brain?’ And walking around the streets of New York with all of us just faces glued to our phones, it’s like we are phone zombies. So I knew from the beginning that was one of the things that needed to be in the tapestry of social commentary.”
Some characters in the film, having taken drugs, seem as if they’re zombies, too.
Others, who are actually zombies, are assumed to be people on drugs.
“We also wanted to look at the opioid epidemic and drug use, which is pretty rampant in the queer community,” Romero says.
Another theme is infighting and tension within the community as well as ageism and “the corporate poaching of queer talent.”
Nina West as the drag queen Ginsey.Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
One character, Yasmine (Dominique Jackson), starts out at another party because she’s getting more money to be there.
“At that party, it’s not her people, it’s pretty soulless,” Romero says. “She’s a prop, she’s arm candy, but she’s making her money. And I feel like that’s something that’s been going on more and more, which is these brand parties that want the queer talent because it’s cachet and cool to have the queers, but it’s all for corporate incentive.”
Another part of the “tapestry of dark sh–” Romero wanted to address in the movie is having an abundance of information, but not knowing who to trust in a crisis.
“Who do you listen to when you have it coming at you from all directions — the TV, the phone, your friends on the streets?”
“I personally don’t trust any information that’s coming at me,” Romero says.
Part of that unease plays out in the misguided message from the city’s mayor in the film, bringing another related theme — “We can’t trust our politicians,” the director says.
Tina Romero, flanked by zombies, at a ceremony for her father’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2017.Chelsea Lauren | Variety | Penske Media via Getty Images
The commentary on all of these subjects connects Romero’s work to her father, whose “Night of the Living Dead” was analyzed as a potential critique of capitalism, racism and the Vietnam War.
“At the end of the day, what I love about my dad’s films is that he never gave scientific reason for the dead rising. He always stuck to a more vague, spiritual overall unrest,” she says. “You know, ‘when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.’ (A line from “Dawn of the Dead.”) We are the problem, and the problem is a collective, deep longing. It’s not a monkey bite, it’s not a tainted drug. There’s no inciting incident. It’s more about a general darkness. We have pushed ourselves to the brink of the end of humanity.
“Zombies are such a great mirror to hold up to ourselves,” Romero says. “Like, what are we doing wrong as people that’s causing this problem?”
How to survive the zombie apocalypse: Laugh
Endless scrolling means we stay updated on social media posts from celebrities and friends alike.
But when will we look up and break our zombie behavior?
“The loneliness and the lack of connection in the most hyper-connected age is such an interesting dichotomy,” Romero says.
“I really love that our hero (Sam) doesn’t have a phone, because at the end of the day, it is about putting the phones down and connecting IRL, human to human. That’s what’s gonna save us, and that’s what’s gonna save our characters.”
Some of those characters start the story with grudges, differences or fears toward each other, then have to work together to survive.
“I think it’s so crucial, especially as we are in this hyper-online world where it’s so much easier to fight and be mad at each other … It just seems like more than ever we need to hang on to the drabs of humanity,” Romero says. “If we are going to survive as humans, we’ve really gotta stick together.”
One of the best tools for survival: a good sense of humor.
Dominique Jackson as Yasmine and Tomás Matos as Nico, aka Scrumptious.
Shannon Madden | Independent Film Company | Shudder
Sam (Spivey) and Jane (Lindley) have a moment early in the film when talking about two married characters, Lizzy (Lindhome) and Dre (O’Brian), being cringe “Disney adults.”
“Oh my God, like what did we fight for?” Jane says.
“Right?! If Marsha could see it,” Sam says, referring to trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, who grew up in New Jersey.
It’s the kind of humor made for laughing out loud because it’s so rooted in reality.
In another scene, Barry, a maintenance man (Dunn-Baker), is confused about pronouns and gender.
Video contains explicit language
Nico (Matos), a character who prefers to be known as Scrumptious, clears everything right up for Barry, pointing to various people at the party.
“She is a drag queen. They are nonbinary. And you are behind. So kindly catch the f— up.”
Other moments continue to play on gender and power dynamics.
When Dre (O’Brian) suggests to Barry that he secure the premises — given the whole zombie apocalypse — the bartender, cisgender male Jimmy (Cheyenne Jackson), is not happy.
“Hey, who put you in charge??” he barks.
“Barry, how about you and me go secure the premises?” Jimmy says without hesitation.
Cho’s character, Pops, demonstrates one way to get rid of a zombie: drilling directly into its brain.
This, of course, prevents said zombie from eating everyone in the place.
Nico, aka Scrumptious, has the perfect reply.
“You ate that!”
“Queens of the Dead“ runs 1 hour and 39 minutes and is not rated. The movie opens in theaters Friday, Oct. 24. Locally, the film is playing at AMC theaters in Clifton, Elizabeth, New Brunswick and Cherry Hill as well as New York’s IFC Center and AMC Empire 25.
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