Daughter of Darkness: How Queens of the Dead Director Tina Romero Queered the Zombie Film
Following in the lurching footsteps of her father, horror maestro George A. Romero, the writer-director unpacks how she made a “big, gay zombie movie”
by Lana Thorn & Alex Secilmis 25 October 2025
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When it comes to the cult of the horror film, Tina Romero was indoctrinated a little earlier than even the most morbidly curious children. She learned to walk on the set of Day of the Dead; she had Fluffy’s bloodied crate from Creepshow as home decor; and in her own words, “I sat on a zombie’s lap before I ever met a mall Santa.”
Being the daughter of the late George A. Romero, who popularised the modern zombie archetype with his Night of the Living Dead series, the 42-year-old director was largely unfazed by her often gruesome surroundings. “None of those things really scared me because I was around my dad,” she recalls over Zoom from her home in New York City. “And my world was very much a mash-up of light and dark. At night in my room, I would watch 80s Disney or movie musicals—Bye Bye Birdy, Pippi Longstocking—and then tiptoe past a horrifying movie poster on my way to the bathroom. I always tell people that I’m an edgy cheeseball.”
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A similar mix of light and dark forms the rotting backbone of her debut feature film, Queens of the Dead. The horror comedy follows a party-gone-wrong in Bushwick, where drag queens and queer club kids square off against a horde of fashionable, silver-skinned zombies whose phone addiction is equally undead. Gory, glamorous, and heartfelt, it’s as much a zombie romp for the 2020s as it is a tender story about queer survival—with a starry guest list including Katy O’Brian, Jaquel Spivey, Dominique Jackson, and Jack Haven.
Romero’s path to making Queens of the Dead began in her early childhood, when she quickly realised that she wanted to go into the family business. One of the most common forms of quality time with her dad was watching movies, and he, a “film traditionalist”, insisted that she see the classics. Together they saw films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Magnificent Seven, and Jaws, with the Spielberg blockbuster mildly traumatising her and ultimately inspiring a lifelong love of creature features (a day before our interview, she celebrated her birthday with a screening of Sean Byrne’s shark thriller Dangerous Animals). Their watchlist had a different effect on her father, who would frequently, openly weep at a wide variety of triggers—the overture to West Side Story being a repeat offender. “He showed me how cinema has the power to move people,” Romero says. “It’s beautiful that this art form can strike a chord so deep in this grown man’s heart that he’s sitting there crying. His love of cinema just implanted in me because I loved him so much. And the bug bit me very young. Being on set is one of the most magical experiences ever—the sound of a rolling bell is always a comfort to me. To this day, production excites me the most: the fact that we’re on a mission, we’re all doing this together, and we have a vision.”
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After a couple of homemade short films in her teens, Romero pursued a Cinema Studies degree at Wellesley College. “My dad rolled his eyes a bit at the film analysis,” she smiles. “He’d say, ‘The door is that colour because that’s the colour paint we had on the day; you can’t tell me that it represents communism.’ And while that is true, I get a kick out of it. I like analytical thinking as well as the practical side.” To perfect that aspect, she applied to the NYU Tisch Graduate Film programme. “When you go to film school, of course, your dream is to make a feature. Maybe even a feature that gets seen in the cinema.”
Before making that feature, Romero “kept the lights on” working in NYC’s queer club scene—performing as her dance-pop-loving, rabbit-mask-wearing alter ego DJ Trx. As Trx, she met some of her closest friends, people whom she today calls her family, but she also discovered a culture of discord within the community. One night, at a party where she DJ-ed regularly, one of the co-promoters broke off and started a rival party (“bad form, big drama,” she explains). The next day, she read a manifesto online, posted in reference to the rift, that read, “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” “That’s when it hit me,” she says. “I started to think about how rich this world was. Yes, queer nightlife is a space of resistance and connection—when you’re othered in this world, it’s where you can find your people. But it’s not without infighting, and there’s so much to dig into.”
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Romero had never intended for her first film to centre on the undead, but it turned out that her father’s brand of socially conscious genre flick was the perfect vehicle to tell a story about queer nightlife and community. “My dad made his zombie films so many years apart that they ended up being these time capsules that reflected what was going on,” she says. “I’m very happy that I can still be a Romero telling a story in 2025 with the monster he created, and it was important to me to queer the canon in this way.” In this respect, she found a fitting way to connect horror with her world.“Drag is such a powerful mechanism because it’s also a means of social commentary, as is the horror genre. And horror is at its best when there’s meat underneath it, when you’re saying something with it.” And while Queens of the Dead sticks to Romero rules (“they don’t run; one bite turns you; you have to kill them by taking out the brain”), its campy, light touch is Tina’s, not George’s. “We’re playing in his sandbox, but I’m also proud of how this is not a film that he would ever make. This is really not a George Romero film.”
Starting on the script around 10 years ago with co-writer Erin Judge (whom she describes as a mix of Aaron Sorkin, Quentin Tarantino, and Amy Sherman-Palladino), Romero had the tricky task of writing a breezy horror flick that’s also a balanced ensemble piece. The queer community is the main character, and she and Judge were adamant to represent a spectrum of identities and generations. You have Dre (Katy O’Brian), a lesbian DJ with a pregnant wife; Nico (Tomás Matos), a non-binary dancer; drag queen Ginsey Tonic (former Drag Race contestant Nina West); transphobic butch lesbian Pops (Margaret Cho); and even a token straight character, the MAGA Republican Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker). Queens of the Dead economically introduces the motley crew before bringing in a zombie apocalypse that forces them to resolve their differences.
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The other non-negotiable was simple: “I needed my zombies to look fabulous,” Romero asserts with a smile. “I was a little bored of seeing zombies with hyper-realistic rotting flesh in flannels and jeans. Also, aesthetically, I love the zombies in Dawn of the Dead—I like how they’re just painted green. I think your audience is down to go with you; if you tell them, ‘That’s what a zombie looks like,’ they’ll roll with it.” The director would later finalise the look with head of makeup Christina Grant, settling on silvery, glittery green skin. With costume designer David Tabbert on board, the brief was to keep the zombies stylish even in their undead afterlife. “They were out on a Saturday night in Bushwick, so they’re in stilettos. The question was, ‘Can we add a little blood, but make it fashion? Can we rip off a shoulder, but make it fashion?’”