Review: QUEENS OF THE DEAD Embraces and Transcends Its Legacy

It’s important when a second-generation filmmaker arrives on the scene that we judge their work on its own merits. So let’s do that first: Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead is a riotous, fiercely independent feature debut, presenting a shimmering new color in the horror comedy spectrum. It’s a crowd-pleasing feast of genre and laughs that’s destined to become a perennial favorite.

That said, it’s impossible to talk about the film without acknowledging the legacy of which it is now a part; what’s exciting is that the film not only knows this, but embraces it. No matter how we see ourselves, our legacy is something that is ultimately, if unfairly, decided by other people. Tina Romero, who learned to walk on the set of her father’s film Day of the Dead, and who worked on her dad’s later movies, probably has a front-row seat to how a legacy can happen with or without the individual’s say-so. Small wonder then that the theme of legacy is front and center in her debut feature film, which finds the filmmaker confronting, owning, and transforming her own. If this is how it’s going down, Romero seems to be saying, she’s at least gonna pick the playlist at the party. 

George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead, and in the 57 years since, no one’s really improved on his formula. In Queens of the Dead, Tina Romero picks up the baton of not only her father’s cinematic invention, but his penchant for centering marginalized protagonists. Here it’s all pushed to its next logical step, as a group of queer characters find themselves trapped in a Bushwick nightclub, fending off a horde of the living dead. 

But legacy is not just a behind-the-scenes meta narrative in Queens; it’s very much on the mind of its protagonists, as well. Dre (Katy O’Brian) is a promoter and DJ whose drag event “Yum” is a bit of a zombie itself – talent keeps flaking, crowds aren’t showing, and the toilet’s not working, but Yum nonetheless lumbers on, and Dre’s desperately hustling to go out on a win before maybe calling it a day. Any indie creator (and probably more than one in the Romero household over the years) can relate to Dre’s struggle. “This is my legacy!” she literally says to her wife Lizzie (Riki Lindhome) during a fraught phone call. On the other end of the phone, a supportive Lizzie (a nurse whose hospital shift is about to get really, really bad) holds back some personal news that will redefine Dre’s idea of legacy.