On the surface, there\u2019s easy symbolic meaning to \u201cQueens of the Dead,\u201d the zombie movie from the director Tina Romero, the daughter of the horror filmmaker George A. Romero.<\/p>\n
Like the elder Romero\u2019s \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d the seminal 1968 film that upended the horror genre and reimagined it as an arena for social critique, Tina Romero\u2019s film centers on a zombie hide-out, only instead of an allegory about imperialism and racism in the United States, the apocalypse outside might be seen as a story of queer life under assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cQueens,\u201d though, is more as a silly, luridly bedazzled romp than anything else. Here, Dre, played by Katy O\u2019Brian (\u201cLove Lies Bleeding\u201d), is a frustrated promoter trying to get people to show up to a Brooklyn drag night when zombies crash the party. But the ultimate horror seems to be the beefing drag queens who are forced to barricade themselves in the bar and team up for the apocalypse.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all meant to be viewed through the lens of camp, that increasingly diluted and all-too-broad category that here feels more like an excuse for the film\u2019s flat construction than an aesthetic approach. Though you\u2019ll get a few laughs out of its cast, which includes Jaquel Spivey as a legendary drag queen brought out of retirement and Margaret Cho as a butch enforcer \u2014 they\u2019re the kind of ensemble you\u2019d imagine would be fun to watch something like this with on a rowdy themed bar night.<\/p>\n
Queens of the Dead
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the surface, there\u2019s easy symbolic meaning to \u201cQueens of the Dead,\u201d the zombie movie from the director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[14102,14106,14104,14103,158,9,24,63,122,124,123,14099,14100,14105,14101],"class_list":["post-21108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-cho","tag-jaquel","tag-katy-obrian-1989","tag-margaret","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-of-the-dead-movie","tag-romero","tag-spivey","tag-tina-film-director"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21108","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=21108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}