written by Cheryl Eddy, Gizmodo

George A. Romero's daughter makes her feature directing debut with the queer horror comedy, in theaters October 24.

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.

And I’m really proud of the fact that this isn’t a movie that is showing queerness in a bleak way. It’s celebratory. It’s joyful. I feel like that’s what we need as queer people right now: we need to celebrate ourselves and we need to have some fun. And we need to feel the joy. So it feels incredibly important to me to be able to do this. My dad’s movies [had] a history of representing marginalized communities. And I’m so proud that I can, in 2025, do this for the queer community through the Romero zombie monster.

I hope this is a place where people can come and feel celebrated instead of erased and have a little reprieve from the fucking news cycle that just every single day is so scary. It is a horror film, but it’s also lighthearted. I wanted to make a film that people left the theater feeling a little hope in their heart and a pep in their step and a little fighting spirit. Because we have to keep fighting, and we have to stick together as a community and get through this, whatever this is.

io9: George Romero’s movies always had social commentary front and center; for instance, Dawn of the Dead’s shopping-mall zombies and consumerism. Queens of the Dead definitely seems to be making a statement about social media: influencers, dating apps, Snapchat, being too online, and being overly connected to our phones. What made you want to zero in on that theme?

Romero: Oh, because I am just so freaked out about how my own brain has changed in the, whatever, 11 years that it’s been since I’ve had a smartphone. I feel it. I feel my brain changing. When I go to open Candy Crush on the train without even making that choice, it really freaks me out. I feel like it’s sucking my attention. It’s changing the ways that we interact—just the anxiety it provokes. It’s been bugging me for a long time, and it really does feel like when you walk around the streets of New York, everyone’s a phone zombie. It’s happening. We are all phone zombies out here.

[The theme] felt very natural to me. We wanted to stick to the Romero zombie monster rules: they are slow, they do not run. One bite turns you. You have to take out the brain to defeat the monster. And then I wanted to add this little thing, which I know my dad would have approved of, which is that they’re still responding to their devices.

I believe that we would still be responding to our devices in in the event of a zombie apocalypse because it’s innate. It’s not a choice. It’s a muscle thing. So that was very important to me. And also, I think that phones—as much as they are a tool, and there are plenty of good things that have come out of connecting online and finding community online—I also think they are separating us in a whole entirely new way. I think it’s causing more tension and causing more fighting. That’s also something I wanted to dig into with the character of Barry [played by Quinn Dunn-Baker]. Barry, the brother-in-law, is on very different podcasts and very different algorithms but ultimately has a lot more in common with this group of people than he realizes. And I think that’s kind of the case for all humans right now: we’re more mad at each other online than we need to be.

io9: The movie plays into zombie movie tropes—the sheltering in place, the weapons-gathering scene, and the “head shot” directive—but its setting and characters bring a new perspective. How conscious were you of including those familiar moments and aiming to subvert them?

Romero: I thought a lot about, okay, people are coming to this probably having seen a zombie film. So we don’t necessarily need to review all of the rules. But how can we remind people what they are while also treating the audience with the respect of, like, “You probably know what goes on in a zombie movie”? So there was a bit of a dance around how much we wanted to treat the audience as if they knew nothing or assuming most people would know about a zombie film and the rules of that.

It’s fun to play with the tropes and to queer them, you know? One of the first things I wanted to do was flip the script as far as the motley crew goes. Instead of having the token gay, we wanted to have all queer people with the one straight guy instead, and I love that. I think it really lends itself to a fun ride. And queer people are the funniest, most fun, most resilient, strongest, and most bound to survive. So it all felt so right to me.

And I personally think it’s very boring to kill zombies with guns; it’s so easy. So from the beginning, I was psyched about the concept of DIY weapons. What do they have in the club that they’re using to make armor? What are they fighting these zombies with and what does their armor look like? Because I do think drag in many ways is like armor. David Tabbert, the head of costumes, and I started talking about [the costumes for the final showdown] years before we started shooting. Like, what do their final showdown [outfits] look like and how are they both armor and drag?

io9: The look of the zombies is unlike anything I’ve seen before—they’re metallic and glamorous, which obviously suits the movie’s themes. What went into coming up with the monster make-up?