On a seemingly normal day in Brooklyn, club owner and DJ Dre (Katy O’Brian) is floundering. She’s desperate to find a replacement when her latest show’s headliner, international drag superstar Jasmine (Dominique Jackson), cancels at the last minute. Meanwhile, across town in a downtown hospital ER, Dre’s nurse wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome) is trading barbs with best friend Sam (Jaquel Spivey) — a former drag sensation who ended their career under mysterious circumstances — while caring for Trans patient Jane (Eve Lindley).

Later that evening, and much to the delight of the show’s host and the new arrival’s former drag mother Ginsey Tonic (Nina West), Sam unexpectedly arrives at Dre’s club. Lizzy has convinced him it would be the perfect venue to stage an impromptu comeback, even if it might be for one show only. But Sam and Dre have a complicated history, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to work out their personal issues before the patrons start to arrive for their night of drinking, dancing, and sweaty fun.

But before any of that can happen, director Tina Romero, daughter of George A. Romero, triggers the zombie holocaust, and her feature-length debut Queens of the Dead suddenly comes vividly to life in all its rambunctious, triumphantly Queer undead glory — a worthy companion piece to her father’s classics (most notably the iconic trifecta of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead). The filmmaker still makes the genre her own, infusing a sense of hope and optimism amid all the bleak, flesh-chomping madness of the apocalypse.

Romero and cowriter Erin Judge split their story into distinct, parallel halves. The first concerns the small group at Dre’s club — which comes to include Jackson and the likes of Jack Haven, Cheyenne Jackson, Tomás Matos, Quincy Dunn-Baker, and the talented Margaret Cho, all of whom get multiple moments to shine — and their attempts to figure out an action plan. The second involves Lizzy and Jane as they make the perilous trek from the hospital to the club in what they can only surmise is a race against time, the former refusing to believe anything bad has happened to her beloved while the latter is calmly elated to have found a friend who seems to honestly care whether or not she lives or dies.

This idea of zombification as a mirror to society’s self-inflicted communal isolation works rather well. It forces the survivors to do the one thing they’ve almost forgotten how to do, and that’s to openly and frankly communicate with others face-to-face. They have to put their differences aside and problem-solve, and they need to do it together, not as individuals. This evolution, especially for Dre and Sam, is wonderful, building to a lovely moment of catharsis and forgiveness.

Through all of this, Romero weaves not-so-subtle commentary on Queer subculture, found family, the opioid crisis, and social media addiction. These zombies are far more flamboyant than the ones we typically see in these films, almost as if their transformation has given their skin a faint, iridescent shimmer that sparkles in the right light (and especially underneath a disco ball). While they’re all as carnivorous as ever, they’re also prone to mindlessly wandering around, staring at their cellphones as if they’re struggling to post a selfie or upload a viral TikTok video — even if none of them any longer knows why they want to do it. This idea of zombification as a mirror to society’s self-inflicted communal isolation works rather well. It forces the survivors to do the one thing they’ve almost forgotten how to do, and that’s to openly and frankly communicate with others face-to-face. They have to put their differences aside and problem-solve, and they need to do it together, not as individuals. This evolution, especially for Dre and Sam, is wonderful, building to a lovely moment of catharsis and forgiveness.