I have an axe wound: Queens of the Dead (Review)
A campy, tender romp through Zombie conventions, this collection of colourful characters remind us that Horror has always been for the Gworls.
Queens of the Dead is in theatres in the US this weekend!
I have to get a couple unserious things out of the way before my review...
First off, CHANI MENTIONED! And, to that point, Jack Haven in drag as a valley girl who gets to make out with Papí Margaret Cho? Was this film constructed in a lab for ME?
Now – This isn't a George Romero movie - it's a Tina Romero movie. Yes, his daughter – in so many ways than one.
In the lineage of B-movie Zomb-pocalypse films of the past, Queens of the Dead isn't reinventing the wheel, but rather handing it over to the genre's most voracious fans, and most ardent supporters – the Queers™. Romero interprets this unapologetically, and leaves it unsanitized – no one has to play small in this universe.
What struck me as heavily resonant, though, was how directly you could draw a line between the events of the film, and the current epidemic of drug use in the Queer community. The film is sure to signal this at multiple points, but it's not done without an intense amount of care ("You're with us until you're not").
Horror tends to punish its protagonists for queerness or "unchristian" behaviour, but the most subversive part of Romero's interpretation of the genre is how random, how dispassionate, tragedy and death is. The characters that get bit or die in this film (no spoilers) do nothing to deserve it, and it comes out of nowhere. In Act 3, watching a character find out their partner had died, I had this chill run down my spine - a recognition of a grief that didn't need any zombies or apocalypses to be legitimate.
The brilliance of layering the lived experience of a community onto genre filmmaking like this is there will inevitably be these moments of sync – ways that the metaphor gets serious, and you're reminded that life an also be a bit freakin' horrific.
Yes, I'm overanalysing the Queer Zombie Movie, but am I?
The ending is fab, I hope for 10 sequels with exciting cameos and ballooning budgets – and a themed Halloween challenge on Drag Race, if we're lucky.
