{"id":314115,"date":"2026-08-05T06:36:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314115\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T06:36:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:36:44","slug":"queens-of-the-dead-review-drag-performers-slay-on-the-party-scene-in-playful-zombie-comedy-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314115\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens of the Dead review \u2013 drag performers slay on the party scene in playful zombie comedy | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A zombie epidemic taking place in the LGBTQ+ warehouse party scene is the fun premise of this wobbly but often endearing comedy-horror. The film\u2019s biggest ace is its cast, with charismatic screen presences such as Katy M O\u2019Brian (Love Lies Bleeding<\/a>) and Cheyenne Jackson (30 Rock) sparking off larger-than-life comedy types including Nina West (RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race) and Jaquel Spivey (2024\u2019s Mean Girls<\/a>). Slay, queen, boots the house down, etc.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, director Tina Romero has some large boots to fill: she\u2019s the daughter of George A Romero<\/a>, the man who more or less created the zombie movie as we know it. In some ways that\u2019s unfortunate: it\u2019s difficult to watch Queens of the Dead without thinking about the seminal 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead and its variable sequels and imitators. To its credit, QOTD realises that it would be futile to deny its House of Romero heritage; instead, the script calls attention to its venerable ancestor with that film\u2019s most famous quote repurposed as a sassy catcall: \u201cThey\u2019re coming to get you Barbara!\u201d It\u2019s a moment that works pretty well.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there are many moments scattered throughout the film \u2013 one-liners, set-pieces, character intros, dance-offs \u2013 that would work nicely in a skit in a nightclub show or on TikTok. There\u2019s a lack of overall storytelling momentum, though: like the zombies themselves, events mostly just kind of shuffle along. The production values are a bit of a letdown, too: visually, Queens of the Dead has a cheap, bright, flat quality.<\/p>\n

Notable exceptions are the clothes and makeup department (of course) and the gore effects, which are nicely squishy, but the script doesn\u2019t give the practical effects team anything memorably horrible to get their teeth into \u2013 hardened gorehounds may leave feeling short-changed. The target audience is probably more Drag<\/a> Race with a soft spot for silly horror than horror aficionados per se, so those fans should have a good time.<\/p>\n

Queens of the Dead is on Shudder and AMC from 7 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A zombie epidemic taking place in the LGBTQ+ warehouse party scene is the fun premise of this wobbly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-314115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314115","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=314115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}