For a queer horror comedy following a group of club kids and misfits as they tackle the zombie apocalypse, Queens of the Dead has a surprisingly powerful political message. But maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, with Tina Romero at the wheel. The daughter of George A. Romero, the father of the zombie genre, was consciously working to carry on his legacy of politically charged metaphors, while putting her own stamp on the genre.
Fans of her father’s filmography know that George A. Romero did not play around when it came to communicating charged political statements in his zombie movies. His debut feature, the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, shows an America that can’t let go of class, race, and gender prejudice, even when plagued with zombies at every corner. Ben (Duane Jones), the film’s hero, slays zombies and steps up as a resourceful, intelligent leader for a group of zombie survivors. That still isn’t enough to save him from being gunned down by a posse of white rescuers, who, through malice or apathy, don’t bother checking whether the Black man in their gunsights is a zombie or not.
Out-of-control consumerism, and America’s willingness to eat its own, is a prominent subject in his later films – particularly 2005’s Land of the Dead, where consumer culture ultimately spells doom for the communities that have risen up during the zombie apocalypse.
Speaking to Polygon over Zoom, Tina Romero explained that Queens of the Dead, her own directorial film debut, has a message or two to get across as well. Her film is less about America as a whole, and more about the queer community eating itself. Romero says the idea for the film came to her while she was working New York City’s queer nightlife scene as a DJ. She saw a promoter post a question online that stuck with her: “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” That was the spark Romero needed to start writing. Ten years later, she’s addressing the question in Queens of the Dead.
On the surface, a queer horror-comedy may seem like the opposite of her father’s work. Her aesthetic and vibes are starkly different, and while there are certainly moments of levity in George A. Romero’s movies, none are as rib-achingly brazen as Queens of the Dead. However, for Tina Romero and her co-writer Erin Judge, the comedy came second to the deeper social commentary on queer identity, community dynamics, and corporate poaching of queer talent.
“We wrote the script thinking less about the comedy and more about the characters, thinking more about the tapestry of social commentary we wanted to make, and what were the issues,” Romero explains. “And so we had our whiteboard of things. We wanted to tackle the opioid epidemic, device addiction, infighting within the community, and too much information in a crisis.”
Identity and the struggle to understand it, and how that can often lead to misunderstandings and downright hostility from others within the same community, is a huge part of this film. Sam (Jaquel Spivey), a nurse, grapples with his former life as a drag queen and what he feels when he performs versus who he really is. His struggle contrasts with Dre (Katy O’Brian), who is much more confident and comfortable in her skin, and isn’t as understanding of Sam’s struggle as she could be.
The community infighting is further aggravated by the poaching of queer talent. Dre runs a queer nightclub, one that can barely afford to keep the lights on. The nightclub’s headlining act, Yasmine (Dominique Jackson) blows off a show to prioritize a better-paid gig, leaving Dre and others in a crisis. Yasmine instead goes to perform at a corporate party called Glitter Bitch, a promotion for a new club called Yum that’s different from Dre’s nightclub in every possible way. Judging from Yum’s clean, corporate aesthetic, the work undoubtedly pays better, too.
But Yasmine soon realizes she’s being used as a prop to highlight how “queer-friendly” the corporation behind Yum is. When the zombie apocalypse hits, her decision immediately puts her at loggerheads with the holed-up survivors sheltering in Dre’s nightclub. If Yasmine can leave them out to dry in favor of money, they question whether they can rely on her in this new brain-munching world.
Romero has seen corporate interference’s effect on the queer community with her own eyes. “In my life as a DJ, I’ve done the queer parties and I’ve also done the brand parties,” she says. “And the brand parties have all this budget. They have all these resources, they throw money, money, money at it. And yet there’s no life, no soul, because everyone’s there on their phones working, not talking, not dancing, not hanging out. It’s so surreal and so icky, versus the queer parties that have no budget. [Those are] full of DIY to make them work, but they’re full of life.”
At the same time, Romero acknowledges that authenticity doesn’t always put money on the table. “We want queer people to get paid. [Yasmine’s] going to make more money at the Glitter Bitch party, but it’s going to suck, and she’s going to be like a prop.”
Yasmine being willing to give up part of her soul for profit, even at the cost of damning her own community, is the kind of thing Romero is thinking of when she talks about the queer community “devouring its own.” It takes a crisis, with the world breaking apart, to bring this fractured community of queer outsiders back together. Where the zombies of George A. Romero’s genre-defining film highlight the dour narrative that society can’t come together due to past prejudices, Queens of the Dead’s zombies do the exact opposite. It’s a far more optimistic, hopeful take, but one that feels earned for a community whose successes largely (and historically) come from relying on one another.
In spite of that contrast, Queens of the Dead and George A. Romero’s work capture the same desire to bring a loud-and-proud message into horror filmmaking. As Romero puts it: “I can’t be my dad’s kid without trying to say some shit.”
Queens of the Dead is playing in theaters now.
