Horror movies, and specifically the trend of horror comedies, have evolved rapidly in recent years. When it comes to zombie horror comedies, it’s hard to top 2009’s “Zombieland,” and possibly 2013’s “Warm Bodies.”
So, what happens when you add drag queens to the zombie horror comedy mix? Earlier this year, we saw filmmaker Erynn Dalton attempt to answer that question with “Big Easy Queens.” Now, Tina Romero, daughter of the late George A. Romero (“Night of the Living Dead” and others), has put her own dizzying queer spin on the genre with the Bushwick-set “Queens of the Dead” (IFC/Shudder).
The movie opens with the brutal zombie attack on a drag queen in a church, led to her death by a hookup app, thinking she was “about to get laid by a layman.” In the next scene, we see orderly Sam (queer actor Jaquel Spivey) doling out red Jell-O to patients in a hospital, including Jane (trans actor Eve Lindley), a young trans woman hospitalized following an OD from a bad batch purchased from dealer and club kid Nico aka Scrumptious (Tomas Matos).
Nearby, at a club called Yum, Scrumptious is rehearsing a number with Ginsey (drag legend Nina West) and Jax (Samora la Perdida) under the watchful eyes of event promoter Dre (lesbian actor Katy O’Brian), Dre’s intern Kelsey (NB actor Jack Haven), and bartender Jimmy (out actor Cheyenne Jackson). Dre gets some bad news when Yasmine (Dominique Jackson), the star of the show, backs out on her because she got a better gig. Amidst all the activity, plumber Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker), the conservative straight brother of Dre’s wife Lizzy (Rikki Lindholme, also known as one half of the musical duo Garfunkel and Oates), arrives to unclog a toilet in the club.
Lizzy, a nurse at the same hospital where Sam works, and where Jane is a patient, is experiencing morning sickness and has yet to tell Dre that she is pregnant. Meanwhile, as a favor to Dre, Sam has reluctantly agreed to resurrect his drag persona Samoncé and fill in for Yasmine at Yum. Just as the doors to the club are about to open, all the smartphones start buzzing with the same shelter-in-place alert for all five boroughs, and Scrumptious’ social media feeds are “wall-to-wall panic porn.”
Yasmine, having abandoned her other commitment, crawls through a window at Yum and joins the others. However, she was pursued by zombies, one of which bites and kills Jimmy. Thankfully, Kelsey’s fiancée Pops (Margaret Cho) arrives at Yum with her crew, Tiger (Shaunette Rene Wilson), and Twiz (trans actor Becca Blackwell), and they work out a plan that involves escaping to Queens via ferry.
As expected, nothing goes as planned, and the body count continues to mount. There’s a decent level of humor mixed in with the horror, and Romero gets some energized performances from her cast. Just when you think the survivors are safe, a surprise is revealed at the last minute, possibly hinting at a sequel.
Rating: B-
