Tina Romero's QUEENS OF THE DEAD explodes into theaters with drag queens, glitter zombies, and a whole lot of heart.
Every day, it seems I come across some new type of anti trans propaganda. The LGBTQ+ community is used to being a target (it's why we grow up to be so fabulous, you learn to shine in the face of darkness). But there was a stretch where it felt safer for people just to be themselves. Lately, it's felt less safe, and I worry for our trans family.
The world is a scary place right now. But Queens of the Dead shines like a beacon of hope for a lot of people who could really use that in this moment. Listen, I had no idea a campy zombie horror-comedy would be one of the most important movies I watched this year, but here we are.
The ensemble cast of colorful characters spans the queer spectrum. And instead of a token gay character offering up one flavor of gay, we get a token straight character who exemplifies what can happen when people who are unfamiliar with the community just open themselves up to getting to know people as people.
The ensemble cast does a phenomenal job of creating three-dimensional characters, and you'll likely fall in love many times throughout this movie (and have your heart broken, too). Writers Tina Romero and Erin Judge don't ask us to bury our gays entirely (yes, there are deaths and yes, they will wreck you), but with an almost entirely queer ensemble of characters, you'll have survivors in the mix. And it's something I needed to see. Queer joy vibrantly on display. Queer love. Community. Resilience. Defiance.
My hope is that everyone in this community packs the theaters to see this movie and that those members of the audience feel seen. Find yourself on the screen, find your friends on the screen.
And perhaps an even bigger hope than that… is that folks who are not in the community sit down and have a blast with this movie, while also being introduced to a world they're maybe unfamiliar with in such a way that they begin to understand it's all rooted in love and that the people who make up the community on screen are worth fighting to protect in real life. I'm hoping for at least a couple of Barrys (the token straight dude loosely based on Romero's own brother) to be born out of this — fierce new allies who were maybe just unfamiliar before.
If I sound emotional over this movie, I'll tell you now that during the Beyond Fest post-screening Q&A, I got choked up for all of the reasons above (and then some). On stage. With a microphone in my hand. This feels important. Especially right now. Sometimes I like a movie. Sometimes I love a movie. Sometimes I need a movie. Queens of the Dead is the movie we need in 2025, and I'm grateful to everyone involved in bringing it into existence.
As the daughter of George A. Romero, the godfather of the modern zombie genre, director and co-writer Tina Romero doesn't try to outrun her dad's legacy. Instead, she outright acknowledges it in a very fun way that feels right at home in the world she's built, while carving out a path that is uniquely her own. The social commentary fans have come to love (and expect) in a Romero zombie film is present, but the camp is dialed up to eleven for a blend that respects and nods to the legacy while being its own thing entirely.
“It had to be camp on a certain level,” Romero explained. “Zombies are kind of camp. It's such a butch genre, and I was interested in pushing against the butchness of it all. I wanted to find the fabulousness, I wanted to find the fun.”
As the daughter of the man who made the zombie genre what it is, Tina celebrates George Romero's Dead legacy in multiple instances and Easter eggs while firmly affixing her own stamp on Queens. “At the core of my dad's zombies – what makes them special is they are slow, they're sympathetic, and they're silly. All of those things, when you put the queer on top of that, you get camp as a result.”
Co-writer Erin Judge pointed out during a FANGORIA sneak peek screening of Queens that “Making a zombie movie with Tina Romero is like making a movie about Catholicism with the Pope's kid.” She knew all the ins and outs of “a zombie wouldn't do that,” and while this movie is 100% their own fabulous beast, the legacy of the blueprint George Romero created pulses throughout, even in the killer score created by Blitz Berlin.
“From the get-go, we wanted to homage ‘The Dead Suite' by John Harrison,” Romero shared. “We actually talked to John Harrison, and we got his blessing to run with it. My favorite Easter egg is the musical one, and I love how Blitz Berlin remixed it. They even incorporate it into the Kesha remix at the end. There's a little bit of a ‘Dead Suite' remix going on in that finale music. They're so good, they're so cool, and I'm obsessed with them.”
QUEENS OF THE DEAD (Credit: Shudder)
At the core of the movie is a group of people just trying to survive. A good majority of those people happen to be queer folks, but that doesn't change the fact that it's people trying to survive a deadly attack. As Queens star Katy O'Brian put it, “At the end of the day, when you're forced to understand what really matters, nothing about a trans person changes how you live your day-to-day life. It just doesn't. Are you really saying if your life depended on surviving with someone who was different than you, you wouldn't do it?”
When it came to balancing the camp of irridescent glitter zombies with the high-stakes life-or-death situation we find our heroes in, Queens star Tomas Matos explained what makes it work. “The best kind of camp is the camp that is grounded. It lends itself to a film like this, it makes sense that it would be campy. We're drag queens during a zombie apocalypse! A plus B must equal C, and that C stands for Camp!“
QUEENS OF THE DEAD (Credit: IFC)
“The thing here was to try to find the balance of where our world lived and what our reality is at any given moment, and creating something the audience really believes in,“ added star Nina West. “That way, when shit really hits the fan and we start getting a body count, and the people that we love are dying, there is an emotional weight to that. You get the high of the laugh, and you get the low of I can't believe x, y, or z happens. It's exhilarating at all turns, and the film serves all those emotional roles for the audience.”
Queens star Jack Haven touched upon the heart that exudes from the film and the emotional beats that ring true even amid the wonderfully wild campiness of it all. “Really every single person in this movie is so pure of heart and full of love. So it didn't matter how crazy we got, there was still so much care and tenderness for each other and for the story.”
“Yeah, that's the right word, tenderness,“ co-star Margaret Cho agreed. “There was a lot of tenderness applied from Tina's point of view as well. It'svery hard to do these huge set pieces with this massive cast; it was the care applied, kind of from the bottom up. It was really special to be a part of it.“
