On the surface, there’s easy symbolic meaning to “Queens of the Dead,” the zombie movie from the director Tina Romero, the daughter of the horror filmmaker George A. Romero.
Like the elder Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” the seminal 1968 film that upended the horror genre and reimagined it as an arena for social critique, Tina Romero’s film centers on a zombie hide-out, only instead of an allegory about imperialism and racism in the United States, the apocalypse outside might be seen as a story of queer life under assault.
“Queens,” though, is more as a silly, luridly bedazzled romp than anything else. Here, Dre, played by Katy O’Brian (“Love Lies Bleeding”), is a frustrated promoter trying to get people to show up to a Brooklyn drag night when zombies crash the party. But the ultimate horror seems to be the beefing drag queens who are forced to barricade themselves in the bar and team up for the apocalypse.
It’s all meant to be viewed through the lens of camp, that increasingly diluted and all-too-broad category that here feels more like an excuse for the film’s flat construction than an aesthetic approach. Though you’ll get a few laughs out of its cast, which includes Jaquel Spivey as a legendary drag queen brought out of retirement and Margaret Cho as a butch enforcer — they’re the kind of ensemble you’d imagine would be fun to watch something like this with on a rowdy themed bar night.
Queens of the Dead
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
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