What if the zombie apocalypse broke out in Brooklyn—and infiltrated the queer nightlife scene? That’s the very fun and sparkle-infused premise of Queens of the Dead, which opens this week and is directed by Tina Romero—yes, the daughter of zombie movie legend George A. Romero.
io9 talked to Tina Romero all about her debut feature, including what it’s like carrying on her father’s splattery legacy and the importance of seeing joyful queer representation onscreen.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: Growing up with George Romero as a dad, how did that affect your perception of zombie movies?
Tina Romero: I tell people I sat on a zombie’s lap before I met the mall Santa. Zombies were just like a fact of life. Like, Santa Claus exists and zombies exist, and that’s just how it is. I also say that I’m a kid who grew up on Pippi Longstocking and Bye Bye Birdie and West Side Story and ‘80s Disney movies, but then I would tiptoe past a terrifying poster on the way to the bathroom at night or Fluffy’s crate from Creepshow. So my world has always been a very strange mashup of dark and light.
I think that is at the core of my creativity. I’m an edgy cheeseball, and I like things that are light and playful and colorful and also have a bit of a gory edge. And my dad was very much the same. He made some dark, nihilistic, scary movies, but he was such a gentle giant, and he also loved the cheesy stuff. We watched a lot of movies together. That was our primary form of bonding. And he would unabashedly weep when he was moved. And I think that really impacted me and showed me the power of movies, the power of film to move people. That’s what I always picked up on: movies can move people and they can provoke real-life empathy. That was my guiding light as far as what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to move people with movies.
io9: Was there any hesitation about making your feature film debut a zombie movie because you knew people would immediately compare you with your dad—or was that sort of the reason why you wanted to make a zombie movie first?
Romero: I think it’s both. As [Katy O’Brian’s character] Dre says in the movie, it’s always both. Certainly there was some hesitation, big shoes to fill, and fear of comparison, which is why I didn’t want to touch the genre unless I could do it in a way that felt authentically me. So when the concept came to me, it was just a very full-body yes. The idea of getting into the zombie genre through the lens of queer nightlife just felt like, this is exactly how I want to introduce myself as a filmmaker because this is a world that I know and people that I care about; I can tell [this] story authentically.
And I love zombies; I know zombies; I grew up with zombies. So let’s mash up these worlds, and let me introduce myself as my own filmmaker while getting to also carry forward the monster that my dad created into 2025 with a female perspective, with a queer perspective. It just felt really right. Once the idea hit me, I knew that this was the perfect first feature for me.
io9: Queerness has been present in horror movies since horror movies began, though until the last few decades it was more subtext and suggestion. Queens of the Dead is very overt, of course. How does it feel to be carrying on that legacy and getting to be very free about it?
Romero: Oh, it feels incredible. I’m so excited that Shudder and IFC are putting this movie out in 2025. It feels like such an important time to, as you said, like it’s not subtext, it’s out there. We are here; the queers are here. We’re fighting zombies, we’re surviving, which is very much how the world feels right now.
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