The queer horror-comedy Queens of the Dead opens with a sharp, self-aware moment: drag performer Julie Jay follows a smear of blood into an empty church and proclaims, “This isn’t a George Romero movie!” Before long, a seductive, zombified priest attacks her, collapsing the joke into full-on gore.
At first glance that line can read as defensive — especially because the film is directed by Tina Romero, the daughter of George A. Romero, whose work practically invented modern zombie cinema. But Tina says the line was never meant to reject her father’s influence; instead, she sees it as a way to acknowledge and preserve his legacy while staking out her own territory.
Romero explains that taking on her father’s monster felt like a responsibility. She wanted to honor the rules and spirit he established while translating the idea for a new era — to carry the Romero zombie into 2025 on her own creative terms.
George A. Romero’s films set the template for the genre with their stark, politically charged storytelling and gruesome imagery: pallid, shambling corpses with white irises and ravenous mouths that function as social allegory. Tina Romero’s approach is intentionally different. Her undead are glamorous remnants of former lives — clothed, glitter-streaked, and eerily human-eyed — a stylistic choice that reflects both aesthetic intent and the film’s modest production scale.
That distinction is deliberate. Tina wanted to make a zombie movie that felt unmistakably hers: brighter, more theatrical, and rooted in music, dance, and costume. By leaning into the exuberance of queer nightlife, she aims to introduce audiences to a Romero film filtered through her sensibilities rather than imitate her father’s exact tone.
Caring for that legacy is a heavy lift. George A. Romero’s best-known films used the undead to skewer consumerism, racism, class divisions, and cultural panic — themes that helped elevate his work beyond simple shock value. Tina’s film channels that same impulse toward social commentary, but through a narrower lens: the dynamics and conflicts within the queer nightlife community.
She traces the film’s inception to a flash of inspiration: years spent DJing in New York’s queer nightlife and a passing online remark from a promoter — “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” — that crystallized the film’s central metaphor. From that line, she shaped a story that uses the nightlife scene as both backdrop and prism for a modern zombie outbreak.
Romero says her father’s spirit is present in the movie, but she insists the result is distinctly her own: it carries the Romero name and DNA while speaking in a voice that is Tina’s alone.
Queens of the Dead opens in theaters on October 24, 2025.
Source: Polygon
