A weird horror-comedy about a group of club kids and misfits who fight a zombie apocalypse. Queens of the Dead has a surprisingly powerful political message. But perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise, with Tina Romero behind the wheel. The daughter of George A. Romero, the father of the zombie genre, was consciously working to continue its legacy of politically charged metaphorswhile leaving his mark on the genre.
Fans of her father's filmography know that George A. Romero did not play around socially. accusations of political statements in their zombie films. His debut feature film, the 1968 classic. Night of the Living Deadshows an America that cannot abandon class, race and gender prejudices, even when zombies stalk it on every corner. Ben (Duane Jones), the hero of the film, kills zombies and becomes the resourceful and intelligent leader of a group of zombie survivors. It's still not enough to save him from being shot by a squad of white rescuers who, out of spite or apathy, don't bother to check whether the Black man in their sights is a zombie or not.
Out-of-control consumerism and America's willingness to eat its own is an important theme in his later films, especially the 2005 film. Land of the Deadwhere consumer culture ultimately means the death of communities rebelling during a zombie apocalypse.
Speaking to Polygon via Zoom, Tina Romero explained that Queens of the Deadher own directorial debut in film, there are also several messages to be conveyed. Her film is not so much about America as a whole, but about the queer community eating itself. Romero says she got the idea for the film while working as a DJ in New York's weird nightlife scene. She saw a promoter post a question online that stuck with her: “When will the queer community stop eating their own?” This was the spark Romero needed to start writing. Ten years later, she addresses this issue in Queens of the Dead.
At first glance, the strange horror-comedy may seem like the polar opposite of her father's work. Its aesthetic and atmosphere are vastly different, and while George A. Romero's films certainly have their moments of levity, none are as painfully brazen as Queens of the Dead. For Tina Romero and her co-writer Erin Judge, however, the comedy took second place to deeper social commentary on queer identity, community dynamics, and the 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 that we wanted to create and what the problems were,” Romero explains. “So we had a board of things. We wanted to address 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 this can often lead to misunderstanding and outright hostility from others in the same community, is a huge part of this film. Sam (Jacquel Spivey), a nurse, is trying to come to grips with his former life as a drag queen and how he feels when he performs compared to who he really is. His struggles contrast with Dre (Katie O'Brien), who is much more confident and comfortable in her own skin and isn't as understanding of Sam's struggles as she could be.
The divisions in the community are further exacerbated by the poaching of queer talent. Dre runs a weird nightclub that can barely afford to keep the lights on. Nightclub headliner Yasmine (Dominique Jackson) crashes the show in favor of a better-paying gig, leaving Dre and the others in crisis. Instead, Yasmine goes to perform at the Glitter Bitch office party, a promotion for the new club Yum, which is different in every way from Dre's nightclub. Judging by Yum's clean corporate aesthetic, the job certainly pays better, too.
But Yasmin soon realizes that she is being used as a prop to highlight how “homosexual” the corporation behind Yum is. When the zombie apocalypse hits, her decision immediately puts her at odds with the survivors holed up in Dre's nightclub. If Yasmeen can ignore them in favor of money, they wonder if they can rely on her in this new brain-eating world.
Romero has seen first-hand how corporate interference impacts the queer community. “In my life as a DJ, I’ve done queer parties as well as brand parties,” she says. “And brand parties have all this budget. They have all these resources, they throw money, money, money at it. And yet there is no life, no soul, because everyone is on their phones, not talking, not dancing, not partying. It's so surreal and so disgusting compared to queer parties, which have no budget.” [Those are] full of homemade things to make them work, but full of life.”
At the same time, Romero acknowledges that authenticity doesn't always bring money. “We want weird people to get paid. [Yasmine’s] I'm 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's willingness to give up part of her soul for profit, even at the cost of damning her own community, is what Romero is thinking about when she talks about a strange community “devouring itself.” It takes a crisis when the world is falling apart to bring this fractured community of strange outsiders back together. Where the zombies of George A. Romero's genre-defining film underscore a gritty tale of a society unable to come together because of past prejudices, Queens of the Dead zombies do the exact opposite. It's a much more optimistic and hopeful approach, but one that feels deserved for a community whose success is largely (and historically) driven by relying on each other.
Despite this contrast, Queens of the Dead and the work of George A. Romero reflects the same desire to bring a loud and proud message to horror filmmaking. As Romero says, “I can’t be my father’s child without trying to say something stupid.”
Queens of the Dead is now playing in cinemas.
