By DEIRDRE CRIMMINS
Starring Katy O’Brian, Jaquel Spivey and Jack Haven
Directed by Tina Romero
Written by Tina Romero and Erin Judge
Independent Film Company/Shudder
Going into your parents’ line of work can only be successful in two ways: you either continue their legacy or completely ignore it and start anew. Thank goodness Tina Romero, daughter of the late great George A. Romero, chose the first option and gave the world the drag zombie comedy QUEENS OF THE DEAD.
Tina does anything but ignore her undead familial roots in her first feature (which had its international premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival ahead of its theatrical release this fall). Not only is it an unabashed zombie film, it also nods to her father’s films and legacy, along with plenty of other pop culture ephemera. Setting the film in a drag club, rife with glitter and bright colors, gave the license to make the film meta-referential and steeped in comedy in ways that other venues would not support. Not to mention the fabulous music needle drops.
The film is more Brooklyn-steeped than your average canvas bag toting, co-op belonging, craft beer drinking post-hipster. Taking place nearly entirely in Bushwick specifically, the action unexpectedly starts in church. Opening with a queen entering the holy chapel to pray, the contrast of drag and Christianity is not only striking, but it brings the historical references to the church from the history of zombie films up to the top of the audience’s awareness. The one-legged priest in Dawn of the Dead and the trio of survivors discussing hell at the top of a cross-shaped shopping mall are two easy to cull moments from her father’s own film. But before getting too deep into this cinematic tract, the queen swipes on a dating app, only to find the match was coming from inside the house (of God). One swift zombie bite later and this pious queen is back on the streets, suddenly transitioned to be covered in metallic glitter, lurching along and looking death-fabulous. Too bad she was supposed to perform at the big Easter show at the struggling drag club.
While the drag club’s rehearsal clearly shows dancing Jesuses (Jesi?), QUEENS OF THE DEAD never goes so far as to make light of Easter being the ultimate zombie holiday (with the resurrection and all). The joke was hot on the internet in the early 2010s—when we were Rickrolling and getting mustache tattoos on our fingers—and QUEENS OF THE DEAD knows the audience is smart enough to pick up on the sentiment without calling attention to it. Smart movies have confidence in smart audiences, and this is a smart movie. But that does not stop it from having this all take place over Easter.
At the club, they are struggling with performers dropping out of the big holiday performance. Dre (Katy O’Brian) is running the club, and this is one more headache that she does not need tonight. She is already dealing with a struggling budget and massive egos of the performers who did show up. Meanwhile at the hospital, nurses Sam and Lizzy (Jaquel Spivey and Riki Lindhome) are taking care of patients when a full-on zombie outbreak takes ahold of their floor. They decide to escape to the drag club where Sam used to perform, and Lizzy can safely return to wife Dre. Their worlds are wholly interconnected, and reunion feels like the only route to safely.
Between the club, the hospital and the influencer party for Glitter Bitch vodka, the cast of QUEENS OF THE DEAD is downright massive. George’s frequent collaborators Tom Savini and Gaylen Ross make appearances, along with Margaret Cho and Cheyenne Jackson who each have legitimate characters to play in the story. The film sprawling across multiple sets with endless undead extras make it an immense undertaking for a first feature film. The general wisdom is to keep new directors in single locations with small casts to act as filmmaker training wheels, before scaling up to more daunting productions. Tina not only flagrantly ignored that typical career advice, but she showed exactly how to ignore it with grace.
QUEENS OF THE DEAD keeps the plot swiftly moving and the zombies slowly staggering. As the action moves from location to location, there are surprises, a good amount of humor and a solid dose of heartfelt character moments to help the audience invest in the lives of these survivors. With such a large cast it would be impossible to have complete character arcs for everyone in the tight 99-minute running time. Instead, Dre carries the heart of the film and O’Brian is more than up for the task. She has been steadily asserting herself as one of the more exciting actors working today, and QUEENS OF THE DEAD is yet another performance deserving of praise.
It is legitimately exciting that there is another Romero picking up the torch of horror film. Tina has wowed with QUEENS OF THE DEAD, and we look forward to her career lurching forward from here.
