{"id":76097,"date":"2025-12-19T23:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/76097\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T23:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:21:11","slug":"stream-it-or-skip-it-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/76097\/","title":{"rendered":"Stream It or Skip It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queens of the Dead (now streaming on Shudder<\/a>) marks the official passing of \u201cof the dead\u201d from father to offspring. Night of the Living Dead<\/a> director George Romero\u2019s daughter Tina Romero directs and co-writes (with Erin Judge) this cheeky, cheezy zom-com in which drag queens battle the undead, who boast a metallic sheen that renders them far more fab-u-lous than the typical shamblers. Rising star Katy O\u2019Brian (Love Lies Bleeding<\/a>) headlines an almost-entirely queer cast for an outing that attempts to give an old genre a fresh, glitzy veneer. Whether it succeeds at that is the question, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Gist: COLD OPEN: A drag queen with towering blue hair and a bodysuit that makes a disco ball look like a dirt clod teeters into a church on impossible heels, following a dating app to a priest who\u2019s lapsing on the ol\u2019 oath. \u201cI\u2019m here to play your organ,\u201d our queen purrs, only to find the priest is, gasp, a zombie, who takes a big bite and, well, shows us a different angle on the idea of conversion therapy. Consider the tone set!<\/p>\n

As the zombie outbreak begins to bubble, we drop in on a dive-bar drag show anchored by Ginsey (Nina West), who goes so big you can see the orange wig and eyeshadow from space. Dre (O\u2019Brian) oversees this production, which hits a snag when headlining talent Yasmine (Dominique Jackson) drops out to hock shitty vodka on social media. This doesn\u2019t help the petty squabbling among Ginsey and the other performers, including snipey-snipey Nico (Tomas Matos) and drug-addled Jax (Samora la Perdida), as well as tough bartender Jimmy (Cheyenne Jackson), ditzy intern Kelsey (Jack West) and Dre\u2019s dopey straight brother-in-law Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker), who\u2019s there to unclog some very gross toilets. Dre needs a replacement headliner, so out of desperation, she calls Sam (Jaquel Spivey), who abruptly abandoned the drag troupe a while back due to stage fright, and now works as a hospital orderly alongside Dre\u2019s nurse wife, Lizzy (Riki Lindhome), who\u2019s just found out she\u2019s pregnant after who knows how long trying.<\/p>\n

Such is the shambolic quasi-drama backdropping the pending zombie mayhem that\u2019ll inevitably take out some of the ensemble, or force their converted friends into the cages lining the club dance floor. Oh, and prompt Margaret Cho to zoom into frame on a powered scooter and jam a power drill into a zombie\u2019s skull, a moment that sounds great on paper but sputters in execution. Our group yearns to reunite with Lizzy \u2013 who has a transgender patient Jane (Eve Lindley) in tow \u2013 and find safety by \u201cgetting the ferry,\u201d which in this movie, absolutely must be a punny double-entendre. My money\u2019s on not everybody making it.<\/p>\n

\"Queens Photo: Everett Collection<\/p>\n

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Another day, another Shaun of the Dead<\/a>-inspired tweak on a formula.<\/p>\n

Performance Worth Watching: O\u2019Brian\u2019s presence has a cooling effect on this film (see also: Christy, which could use a hell of a lot more of her), being the grounded, relatively no-nonsense character who gets things done and maintains a little bit of charisma in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sex And Skin: None.<\/p>\n

\"QUEENS Photo: \u00a9AMC\/courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Our Take: As the elder Romero\u2019s Dawn of the Dead depicted zombie shoppers trapped on mall escalators, the younger Romero\u2019s Queens of the Dead gives us zombies staring at their phones: STAGGER, CHOMP, EAT, POST seems to be their brainless imperative. That and the needling stabs at religion early on are among the ideas that go nearly nowhere in a movie that\u2019s never as entertaining as it\u2019s trying so hard to be. The movie shows the seams of a first-time feature-filmmaker who prefers to run a tight ship in order to maintain a consistent low-grade campy tone instead of taking big swings that might make it memorable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so Queens half-hearts its social commentary, renders action sequences rote and never goes deep enough to engage us with the characters\u2019 emotions. Romero leans heavily on a poppy visual aesthetic boasting lotsa neon greens and pinks, and cheap-looking sets effectively evoking the \u201980s kitsch of bottom-shelf video-store fare. Its comedy is limited to a few fun sight gags and a zinger or three, but otherwise it falls into the close but no cigar smirk bucket (note: \u201chashtag decapitation\u201d is a lousy one-liner). And weirdly, the movie\u2019s also a bit of a slog, its pacing squished flat, with little cultivation of tension and not enough punch behind the big moments, whether it\u2019s Cho\u2019s arrival or the goofy third-act gearing-up montage in which our heroes get EXTRA glam for their showdown with the zombies. And it concludes with an abrupt fizzle that offers little payoff. It\u2019s an easy movie to like, in concept, pedigree and intent, but a harder one to actually enjoy.<\/p>\n

Our Call: Oh, and there\u2019s a moment here praising the superiority of Haribo, when Albanese are OBVIOUSLY the superior gummy bear product. SKIP IT.<\/p>\n

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens of the Dead (now streaming on Shudder) marks the official passing of \u201cof the dead\u201d from father…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[5231,5922,16480,5923,1360,9409,9,24,63,122,124,123,10201,5233,5926],"class_list":["post-76097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-george-romero","tag-horror","tag-horror-comedy","tag-katy-obrian","tag-lgbtq","tag-movie-reviews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-riki-lindhome","tag-tina-romero","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76097","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=76097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}