George Romero’s daughter delivers a ‘big gay zombie movie’ in ‘Queens of the Dead’ (exclusive)

At one point during Queens of the Dead, a character makes a point to say, “This is not a George A. Romero movie” as zombies take over New York City. It’s the most meta of all the references to the pioneer of zombie cinema in the film, which marks the feature directorial debut of George’s daughter, Tina Romero. 

“I am his kid. There’s no denying it. And he has influenced me greatly,” Romero tells Entertainment Weekly ahead of the movie’s world premiere this June 7 at the Tribeca Film Festival. “And this is his monster, this is his genre. I had fun doing my little Romero nods throughout the film, and we have some good ones.” 

Tom Savini, an actor who worked on many of George’s movies in the filmmaker’s heyday, is one such nod. Another is an appearance by Gaylen Ross, who featured in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead. But, to echo that specific piece of dialogue, Romero is profoundly proud of the fact that Queens of the Dead isn’t a George A. Romero movie, and not just because of the subject matter: a kooky assemblage of LGBTQ+ party-goers must hunker down at a warehouse drag show when a zombie outbreak occurs. 

“The zombie apocalypse is such a rich sandbox to play in when it comes to social commentary. I can’t be my dad’s daughter without making an attempt at saying something with zombies,” Romero explains. “I did want this to be a film in which I am paying homage to the world and the monster he created, but I’m also introducing my own voice. It’s very much not a film he would make, but it is using his vocabulary and is playing by his rules. As far as the queer element, on one hand, I just feel like the gays need a zombie film. It’s time that we get to have a big gay zombie movie.”

The faces in front of the camera are the equivalent of a queer Avengers. Without spoiling key points of the film, there is, in fact, a suiting-up montage scene involving a glittery Captain America-esque shield. 

Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding) plays Dre, a stressed-out party promoter who’s trying to throw an epic warehouse rager with drag queens in Brooklyn on the very night the undead start to rise. As the city goes into lockdown mode, Dre teams up with a crew of big personalities — played by Jaquel Spivey (Mean Girls, the movie musical), Nina West (Rupaul’s Drag Race), Tomás Matos (Fire Island), stand-up comic Margaret Cho, Jack Haven (I Saw the TV Glow), Dominique Jackson (Pose), and Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story).

Quincy Dunn-Baker (Nonnas) plays the token straight guy of the group (Romero’s riff on the more common “token gay person”), while Riki Lindhome (Knives Out), Shaunette Renée Wilson (The Resident), Becca Blackwell (Survival of the Thickest), Eve Lindley (Dispatches From Elsewhere), and drag artist Julie J also feature.

Romero didn’t initially have plans to follow so closely in her father’s footsteps by directing a zombie movie. Growing up, she was more interested in a gender-swapped Peter Pan or other modernized takes on storybook figures. “I didn’t want to touch the genre unless it felt authentic to me,” she comments. 

After moving to New York, where she enrolled in NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film program, Romero moonlighted as DJ Trx, landing her first residency as this DJ alter ego at Hot Rabbit, a recurring queer dance party. “It was a really interesting courtside seat to the evolution of the queer community,” the director recalls. “Over the decade that I was DJing in the queer scene in NYC, I saw the community shift from a world that was more split up — boys versus girls — to a world that was much more mixed and identity agnostic.”

A single experience instantly sparked the idea for Queens of the Dead. One year, the co-promoter of Hot Rabbit at the time broke off to start a rival party on the same night. “There was big drama on social media,” Romero remembers. “The original promoter posted this manifesto begging the question, ‘When will the queer community stop devouring its own?’ And it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was like, ‘Oh my God! This would be how I want to explore the zombie genre in this world of queer nightlife. It’s colorful, it’s full of fascinating characters, it’s a world I know, it has music, it has lots of people who are scrappy and know how to make stuff work, it’s New York, it’s so many things — not to mention the intersection of drag and zombies, transformation wise. I got very titillated by the idea.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment  to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.‘sWeekly free newsletter

O’Brian loved it, as well. Before Love Lies Bleeding, her lesbian romance-thriller with Kristen Stewart, even opened in theaters, Romero sent the rising actress a letter to gauge her interest. “I’m a big horror fan. I’ll bite. Let me read the script,” O’Brian remembers responding. “It was something that I was looking forward to doing because I just don’t get to do humor very often. And also I love that it’s just unapologetically queer. We’re not coding anybody or anything.”

The end credits of the movie feature a special thanks to Tom Cruise. That’s because the production of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning allowed O’Brian, who appeared in that film as the character Kodiak, a week off to appear in Queens of the Dead. 

The entire production was a scrappy affair, which wasn’t unfamiliar territory for the cast. Nina West, for instance, knows a thing or two about using hot glue, some sequins, and a sewing machine to make Drag Race eleganza. The shoot largely played out at a warehouse in New Jersey, though two scenes entailed the crew “running around without a permit, basically, on the streets of Bushwick,” Romero says. 

“Our budget was not big, and people really were doing this out of the love for the project. I think it really shows,” O’Brian adds. “Our hair and makeup department pulled in some favors and got all of this zombie stuff. I think The Bride! had just shot there.” (Maggie Gyllenhaal’s movie about Frankenstein’s monster and its bride shot in and around New York City.) “I don’t know if they were supposed to give us this, but they gave us whatever donations that they had left over and really just pieced together something so cool and unique and quirky and enjoyable.”

Romero will never know what her father, who died in 2017 at the age of 77, would’ve thought about the final film, which she wrote with Erin Judge. However, she was lucky enough to pitch him early on. “He said, ‘I love it! Run with it. Go for it,'” she remembers. “Unfortunately, he never got to read the completed script because it took me about seven years to get this developed, and it’s gone through so many iterations over the years — but I did have this blessing.”

This post was originally published on this site