Queens of the Dead (2025)
I could not have gone into Queens of the Dead wanting to like it more. George A. Romero is one of my most-watched directors, full stop, and his Day of the Dead remains the only horror film I have ever handed a full five stars. So when I learned that his daughter, Tina Romero, had made a zombie picture of her own, stacked with Romero-world royalty, Tom Savini and Gaylen Ross on screen and the great Greg Nicotero on effects, I was practically willing it to be good. The pedigree is extraordinary. The goodwill I brought through that door was almost embarrassing.
It pains me, then, to report that it is not good. This is a queer, comic zombie romp set at a Brooklyn warehouse party, and it left me thoroughly deflated. Not angry, not offended, just deflated in the way you only get when something had every ingredient to work and somehow still does not.
My deepest problem is not that it is a comedy. I have no issue whatsoever with the zom-com when it works. Shaun of the Dead is not just one of the best British films ever made, it is one of the best zombie films full stop, and the reason is straightforward: it takes the Romero formula seriously. Its zombies are a real, relentless threat first and funny second, so the horror and the comedy feed one another rather than compete. The laughs land harder because you are genuinely frightened, and the fear lands harder because it keeps ambushing you through the laughter. Queens of the Dead never locates that balance. Its laughs and its scares keep tripping over each other, and without the underlying threat ever feeling real, there is nothing solid for the comedy to bounce off.
The film takes a good twenty minutes to get its zombie threat properly moving, and even then the ghouls feel almost incidental to the whole affair. You could swap them for vampires, slashers, or any old menace and lose nothing at all. That is a damning thing to have to say about a zombie film, especially one carrying this particular surname. Because even the weakest entries in the elder Romero's filmography, and I would point to Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead as the low watermarks, had a real vein of social commentary running through them. The undead always meant something. Consumerism. The military. Human tribalism. Us. Queens of the Dead has none of that. It has a queer setting and a fun premise with genuine potential, the kind of premise where you could absolutely use the zombie as a metaphor for something sharp and meaningful about community, survival, or the way the world treats people on its margins. It does not. It settles for the surface, and the surface is not enough.
The cast does not help matters. Katy O'Brian is the clear exception and does what she can with what she is given. I have been impressed by her elsewhere and nothing here changes that view. But far too many of the performances around her land somewhere between grating and amateurish, and when a horror comedy is not frightening you and not consistently making you laugh, you start to feel every slow minute.
It is worth saying that queer genre filmmaking can be extraordinary. I Saw the TV Glow showed what happens when you pair a queer perspective with genuine dread and real formal ambition, and the result is one of the most unsettling films I have seen in years. That is the kind of film this premise deserved to be in its own register. A good, sharp, meaningful zombie film is buried somewhere inside Queens of the Dead, one that actually used the undead to say something about its community rather than simply borrow a famous name and hope the goodwill carries you home. It is genuinely dispiriting to watch it settle for so much less.
Two stars, and a real letdown from a film I desperately wanted to love.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-08-28
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder Amazon Channel
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu · Philo · AMC Plus Apple TV channel · AMC+ Amazon Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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