Thanks not only to his work in the zombie genre, but also thanks to movies like Creepshow, Martin, and The Crazies, George A. Romero was an inarguable titan in the world of horror. These days, filmmakers often throw in a character named “Romero” into their movies as a direct nod to George’s accomplishments. While John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Stephen King also bring with them deserved horror clout, the surname “Romero” has become a shorthand reference recognized throughout cinema. Understandably, a lot of pressure comes with being Tina Romero, George’s daughter, especially given her pursuits in cinema. With Queens of the Dead, Tina Romero wades not just into the waters of horror, but carries on her father’s legacy so closely that she’s even tackling the zombie subgenre, a realm that her father largely defined for the modern era. Luckily for horror fans, Tina manages to honor the legacy of the zombie movie while also putting an entirely contemporary and entirely queer spin on expectations.

As a bar is gearing up to hold a drag performance in Brooklyn, the performers and event organizers have all their plans and routines thrown out the window when zombies start to infiltrate the warehouse. That’s…honestly the gist of the plot, which likely doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given this is a similar setup to what we’ve seen in countless zombie movies. Some survivors argue, some come together, and others make plans to fight back against the undead.

George A. Romero inspired generations of filmmakers, but the zombie subgenre felt like it had run its course by the time we got to the ’90s. In the 2000s, though, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead was unleashed and helped entirely revive the premise (as did Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and the Resident Evil video game franchise). Wright’s film was much more comedic than the majority of zombie predecessors, with its name even being an homage to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. What’s interesting about Queens of the Dead is how George inspired Edgar Wright and Shaun of the Dead feels like more of a direct inspiration for Tina Romero than any of her father’s films.

Any horror fan who lived through the 2000s knows that Shaun of the Dead inspired countless imitators, some of which were delightful, others which were dreadful. Queens of the Dead, for better or worse, feels more like one of the zombie comedies that came out of the 2000s than it feels like anything similar to the Night of the Living Dead series. Whereas Brandon Cronenberg feels like he’s literally walking in his father’s footsteps, Tina feels like she’s exploring more of her own path. The premise for many of those 2000s zombie comedies was boiled down to: “it’s a zombie movie but our characters are in this unexpected location” or “it’s a zombie movie but our characters are part of this unexpected community,” with the results of either equation having their highs and their lows (honestly, mostly lows). Queens of the Dead borrows from both equations, as a nightclub isn’t a conventional locale, and drag queens and other members of the queer community aren’t the expected protagonists we normally get to see in horror.

Part of what makes Romero’s movie work is how genuinely likable each and every character is; it’s easy to use a variety of stereotypes in ensemble horror movies, and while some of the figures in Queens of the Dead somewhat fall into expected roles, they’re largely outliers from horror tropes. Even Katy O’Brian, whose breakout roles were in The Mandalorian, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Love Lies Bleeding (all of which highlighted her physical fitness), doesn’t get relegated to being the requisite character who uses physical strength to survive. Her character is just as out of their element as the characters played by Jaquel Spivey, Jack Haven, Cheyenne Jackson, and Margaret Cho. Also helping buck the trend is the inclusion of figures who are members of the LGBTQ+ community or are non-binary, while the story also has its fair share of cisgender characters. Even the character played by Quincy Dunn-Baker, who serves as the closest we get to an antagonist for his obliviousness to the queer community, isn’t outright malicious in his confusion over pronouns; he’s more just endearingly ignorant and trying his best. In this sense, Queens of the Dead delivers one of the most diverse and inclusive casts of characters we’ve ever seen in a zombie movie.

The comedy of the film largely works, if only to keep audiences interested in engaged in lulls between more horror-leaning sequences. Queens of the Dead is undeniably part of the horror genre, but it puts its comedy front and center, as the horror provides more of the inciting incidents for the narrative as opposed to being the main draw. Keeping in the spirit of those 2000s zombie comedies inspired by Shaun of the Dead, however, the movie ultimately won’t stick with me, as it’s never particularly hilarious, nor is it particularly effective with its horror.

This isn’t to say that Queens of the Dead is a failure or doesn’t work, by any stretch of the imagination, it’s more that I’ve seen so many low-budget zombie comedies over the years that they all seem to blur together. A filmmaker named “Tina Romero” delivering a zombie movie that focuses on drag queens and the queer community could have been a deceptive, surface-level gimmick that offered nothing outside of that promise, but Queens of the Dead is an entertaining, effective, and, at times, inspiring story exploring how characters from all walks of life face similar struggles, serving as a reminder that people have a lot more in common with each other than they don’t. There’s a lot to like in the movie, and hopefully, this is just Romero’s first entry into a long line of feature films that allow her to continue to forge her own path in horror and circumvent expectations, all while reminding audiences of the “Romero” pedigree as well as redefining the name for the future.

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