{"id":15357,"date":"2025-10-24T19:38:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15357\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T19:38:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:38:24","slug":"tina-romeros-drag-zom-com-werks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15357\/","title":{"rendered":"Tina Romero\u2019s Drag Zom-Com Werks"},"content":{"rendered":"

George A. Romero arguably invented the modern zombie genre with the 1968 classic \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d but, fittingly enough, zombies turned out to be a Frankenstein monster, tromping uncontrollably across the pop culture landscape. There are so many zombie movies, TV shows, video games, comic books and novels now that it seems like everything has already been done. And maybe it has.<\/p>\n

Tina Romero\u2019s \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d is a queer take on flesh-eating ghouls, set in the world of drag. And heck, even that idea is at least 30 years old. Did you ever see Kelly Hughes\u2019s 1995 horror comedy \u201cLa cage aux zombies?\u201d No? Well, I can\u2019t blame you. It\u2019s hard to find. But it\u2019s real, I promise.<\/p>\n

Tina Romero\u2019s \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d may not have the most original idea ever, but it does feel fresh \u2014 or as fresh as a rotting corpse can be. The elder Romero\u2019s films were harsh metaphors for the things that divide us, like racism (\u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d), consumerism (\u201cDawn of the Dead\u201d), militarism (\u201cDay of the Dead\u201d), classism (\u201cLand of the Dead\u201d), and whatever the heck \u201cDiary of the Dead\u201d was about. Romero the Younger uses the same genre to bring people together. It\u2019s a celebration of queer pride that brings a smile to your face, even while your face is covered in blood. And glitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d stars Katy O\u2019Brian (\u201cLove Lies Bleeding\u201d) as Dre, the owner of a struggling New York City drag club called Yum. Dre\u2019s trendy competitor, Glitter Bitch, just stole Yum\u2019s biggest headliner, and so it\u2019s up to retired drag legend Samonc\u00e9 (Jaquel Spivey, \u201cMean Girls\u201d) to save the day, even though they\u2019ve got bad history together. <\/p>\n

And because the zombies have to eat somebody, there\u2019s a big ensemble supporting them, including Yum\u2019s hapless intern Kelsey (Jack Haven, \u201cI Saw the TV Glow\u201d), Dre\u2019s pregnant wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome), hospitalized trans loner Jane (Eve Lindley, \u201cAfter Yang\u201d), drug dealing drama queen Scrumptious (Tomas Matos, \u201cFire Island\u201d), and what the heck, let\u2019s throw in Margaret Cho as a badass lawyer riding an electric scooter who likes to kill zombies with a power drill.<\/p>\n

The best horror movies are usually ones where the heroes could carry their own film if nothing horrible happened, and Romero\u2019s script \u2014 co-written by Erin Judge \u2014 delivers. These are all distinct individuals, and they\u2019re prone to melodrama and camp, but they\u2019re sincere about what really matters. They\u2019re divided by self-doubt, economic distress and petty backstage jealousies, not hatred or revenge. Even the film\u2019s token straight, Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker), isn\u2019t a hateful bigot. He listens to hateful, bigoted podcasts, which is a problem, but it only takes one night out with the gals, with or without zombies, to set him on the path to enlightenment.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s fascinating that Tina Romero made a queer horror movie in the mid-2020s, in a genre about mindless hordes, and didn\u2019t make a film where the zombies are stand-ins for homophobes and transphobes. It would be, let\u2019s face it, the most obvious take on this premise. It might even be an effective one. But \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d is about finding a place for queer community within this pre-existing zombie movie framework, not about using the genre to amplify an \u201cus vs. them\u201d narrative. Tina Romero\u2019s film imagines queer community, at least in microcosm, as being beyond those simplistic binaries. When straight people get trapped in the middle of a zombie siege, they try to kill each other. Queer people just snipe a little and then get to work fixing their problems, and themselves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a message of togetherness that\u2019s undercut, to a somewhat unnecessary degree, by the zombie violence. Everyone loves killing zombies. (Along with Nazis, they\u2019re one of the few movie monsters that evokes zero sympathy.) But the zombies in \u201cQueen of the Dead\u201d still have human urges. They get distracted by social media alerts. They love dancing to house music. Maybe these are hardwired behaviors, like the ghouls in \u201cDawn of the Dead,\u201d subconsciously drawn to a shopping mall. But for a while it looks like Tina Romero\u2019s film might take another path, and either cure or redeem these poor creatures, instead of mass murdering them for fun.<\/p>\n

Look, I can appreciate giving queer heroes an opportunity to cut loose in a genre where they rarely get their own zombie-decapitating hero shots. And hey, everyone loves a drag queen strapping extra spikes to her spiked heels and stabbing a zombie\u2019s eye out with a fabulous high kick. But when your movie is about the beauty of queer community and it culminates with the queer heroes eviscerating dozens of mindless queer monsters, the message gets a little bit mixed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d is on the cheap side, and sometimes it looks it, but the biggest spectacle is the cast. Everyone in this movie is having a glorious time. Jack Haven spends half the film on the floor making silly noises and whining about their literal axe wound. That\u2019s top notch whimsy. Eve Lindley is magnetic in her too-few scenes, as a trans woman unable to afford medical care. Jaquel Spivey aims for real pathos and hits the mark. And of course Katy O\u2019Brian carries much of the film as the grounded, de facto leader trying to save a struggling business, preserve friendships, save her wife, and save everyone\u2019s lives. Not a scene goes by unstolen, often by the whole crew.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to judge Tina Romero\u2019s \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d by her father\u2019s many, similar films, but she\u2019s clearly aware of her family\u2019s legacy and she\u2019s putting her own stamp on it. \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d may not be a timeless classic and it might not be a game changer for the genre, but more than any other recent zombie flick, it\u2019s likely to play the midnight circuit for years. Not because of the camp. Not because of the unlimited cosplay opportunities. But because it fosters genuine good will from the audience. We love these characters, and we want them to stick around. Zomb-ay, you stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George A. Romero arguably invented the modern zombie genre with the 1968 classic \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9997,10197,5923,9,24,63,122,124,123,5229,5233],"class_list":["post-15357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-jack-haven","tag-jaquel-spivey","tag-katy-obrian","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-of-the-dead","tag-tina-romero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}