QUEENS OF THE DEAD Review: Tina Romero’s Zombie Debut Earns Its Crown

George A. Romero may not have invented the zombie film, but he certainly perfected how the undead ghouls could be used to tell stories about the failures of humanity: racism, consumerism, class, xenophobia, and government corruption. Every zombie movie since Night of the Living Dead (1968) has either tried to recapture that magic or distance itself so as not to draw any comparisons to his legendary work, something that’s completely unavoidable for Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead. While hordes of aspiring filmmakers claw their way in hopes of becoming the next Romero, Tina recognizes that the automatic buy-in from audiences thanks to her last name allows her the room to tell her zombie story. 

The film opens at Yum, a struggling New York drag club run by Dre (Love Lies Bleeding breakout Katy O’Brian). When a rival venue, Glitter Bitch, steals her top performer, Dre enlists retired legendary queen Samoncé (Jaquel Spivey, Mean Girls) to help save the business. Their uneasy reunion plays out just as the zombie outbreak begins, drawing in a colorful ensemble: Yum’s hapless intern Kelsey (Jack Haven, I Saw the TV Glow), Dre’s pregnant wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome), the reclusive Jane (Eve Lindley, National Anthem), dramatic influencer Nico aka Scrumptious (Tomás Matos, Fire Island), Samoncé’s drag mother and mentor Ginsey (Nina West), Jimmy the bartender (a wonderfully against-type Cheyenne Jackson) and, in a pitch-perfect bit of casting, Margaret Cho as a lawyer named Pops who has no problem obliterating zombies with power tools.

Romero’s idea for the story is rooted in her own experiences during her first residency at Hot Rabbit, a recurring queer dance party in NYC as DJ Trx. A co-promoter of the event broke off to start a rival party on the same night, and it understandably sparked discourse on social media, culminating in a manifesto from the original promoter with the question, “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” And so,