‘Queens of the Dead’ Review – A Horror Comedy That’s Cool, Kind, and Queer as Hell

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews /

Tina Romero, daughter of legendary horror filmmaker George A. Romero, makes her directorial debut with her own take on the zombie genre in Queens of the Dead. This horror comedy follows a group of drag queens, DJs, drug dealers, and club kids who have to fend for themselves as zombies flood the streets of Brooklyn during a warehouse party. The film is unapologetically made by and for the queer community, and that’s really what makes it sing, despite its flaws. If you’ve ever wanted to see a rag-tag group of gays, girls, and theys—plus a token straight guy—fight for their lives against a horde of shambling, sparkling zombies, then you’re in for a treat. The zombies here are more glitter and glam than guts and gore. But while some may want a bit more horror in their horror/comedy, the heart and humour is what makes this movie so fun. Queens of the Dead is an ensemble film, and its emphasis on community and kinship makes it stand out among other movies in the genre. There’s no single hero or final girl here. The hero is really the queer community, and that’s reflected in the broad and colorful cast of characters. While many of those characters are hilarious and fun to watch bounce off of each other, the characters as individuals feel somewhat underbaked as a result, making it harder to get invested in the individual drama and emotional beats. For that reason, some of the more serious moments that were meant to elicit emotion didn’t quite land for me. In a way, I wish the movie had leaned even more into the absurdity and comedic side. It is a funny movie, and watching it at Fantasia with an eager and joyous crowd was probably the best way to experience this movie. However, not all of the comedic moments landed, just as not all of the emotional beats landed. I still had a great time overall, but I think a more focused narrative and character work would have made those moments even stronger. If there’s anyone that’s close to a protagonist here it’s Katy O’Brian’s club manager, Dre. O’Brian is an absolute star. She has so much presence and charisma. Between a bit part in this year’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and her star-making turn in Love Lies Bleeding, it’s nice to see her do lighter fare like this, where she gets to kick zombie ass but also show some comedic chops. I really hope her career skyrockets, because she’s a very magnetic performer. Jack Haven is the other big scene-stealer as the ditzy blonde intern, Kelsey. This is a far cry from their role in I Saw The TV Glow, and again, it’s nice to see an actor show their range and go from a more intense or serious role to something light and fun, where they’re clearly having a blast and making the audience have a blast with them. Overall, the whole cast is solid. For a relatively low-budget indie movie, it looks great too. It’s chaotic and colorful, with some fun makeup and costume choices that offer a unique and sufficiently silly interpretation of zombies that is actually pretty refreshing in an era where we’ve seen every iteration of scary zombies imaginable (28 Years Later is another recent fresh take on zombies, but that’s more about what it does with its human characters than its zombie design). If you’re looking for a truly scary zombie movie, you won’t find that here. This is very much a comedy more than anything else. But it’s also a beautiful ode from a daughter to her father’s legacy, in a way that is very clearly true to her own experiences and vision. If nothing else, the movie feels like a love letter to both queer spaces/communities and to the genre that her father built his career on. There are plenty of fun and clever easter eggs that pay homage to George A. Romero’s films, but Queens of the Dead is, as Tina Romero said in the Q&A after our screening, a movie that her dad would never have made. It’s her movie through and through, and it’s a welcome addition to the zombie canon. Verdict Queens of the Dead put a huge smile on my face. It’s a joyous movie that in some ways lampoons the zombie genre and in other ways honours it. It’s funny and silly and kind, and it’s unapologetically gay. If you’re looking for a fun zombie flick with an eclectic cast of (mostly) queer characters and a sense of humour, you’ll likely have a good time with this.

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SLA at Fantasia: Carnage for Christmas – Movie Review

Reviews /

We’re kicking off the Fantasia International Film Festival with a self-described “transgender holiday film,” directed and co-written by Alice Maio Mackay. There’s nothing like a good Christmas slasher in the middle of a humid Montreal July to offer a little bit of escapism. Carnage for Christmas is the first film in Fantasia’s ‘Underground’ lineup in 2024, which highlights “bold, super independent outsider works that possess a purity of vision and are wholly unafraid to take risks”. It’s also the first film of Mackay’s that I’ve seen, but, shockingly, considering the Australian filmmaker is just 19 years old, it’s her fifth feature. To be this prolific—and this creatively fearless—at just 19 is both awe-inspiring and more than a little envy-inducing. I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting going in, but with a title like Carnage for Christmas, and a throwback-style poster evoking the iconic Black Christmas (1974), I knew I was probably in for a fun time. And that’s exactly what I got! The film follows Lola, forensic investigator and host of a true crime podcast, who returns to her hometown for Christmas for the first time since running away and transitioning. Upon her return, bodies start to pile up, as her own past and the town’s dark history rear their heads. The holiday vibes are relatively minimal, especially at first. I’m also used to snow-white Christmases here in Canada, so the Australian setting didn’t exactly help to put me in the Christmas spirit. But, despite the lack of snow, we still get a fun holiday twist to the usual slasher tropes and imagery that makes the film effectively campy and creepy. In general, the movie is a bit slow to start, and the resolution felt somewhat rushed to me. But with a scant 70-minute runtime, that’s no surprise, and Mackay still manages to fit a lot into those 70 minutes, from fairly well-realized characters and relationships to small town lore to a whole animated sequence (!) that quickly and impressively conveys our protagonist’s relevant traumatic backstory. And honestly, by the time a drag queen is using her tits as a weapon, I was quite on board with the whole endeavor, despite the film’s flaws. Without spoiling too much, the ending, rushed as it was, felt redemptive and cathartic in a way that I think a lot of queer folks will appreciate. Don’t get me wrong here—for all its messaging, this is also a bloody, expletive-filled slasher. There’s some good use of practical effects, as well as some sharp lines of dialogue and moments of humour that work quite well. The performances, while at times a bit stiff, are also surprisingly good, especially from Jeremy Moineau, who plays Lola and has the difficult task of carrying the entire film and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t acted in anything else before. To that point, you can definitely tell the movie is low-to-no budget, but it’s what I would call “charmingly low budget”. It’s polished enough that the low-budget aspects don’t really detract from the experience, and more importantly, it’s clear that Mackay has an assured vision and presence as a director. With editing and visual effects by Vera Drew (whose film The People’s Joker released in the US earlier this year to critical acclaim), Carnage has a sense of visual flair and confidence that feels rare for a movie at this level. It also feels like a truly collaborative movie. From what I gather, a lot of the cast and crew here are people Mackay has worked with before, and it has the feeling of a group of friends coming together to create something they’re passionate about and have fun doing it, which is something I always appreciate and adore in a movie. Ultimately, we need more trans voices and filmmakers, especially in subversive genres like horror, where they’ve historically been either victimized or villainized. So I’m happy to say that, while the edges are rough and not every swing lands, this is a welcome entry into the queer underground Christmas horror canon. Verdict With a brisk runtime, a distinct sense of style, and some solid performances—all on a very low budget—this is a fun, campy, holiday slasher. While I wasn’t blown away by anything here, Carnage for Christmas shows a lot of promise. If this is what Alice Maio Mackay can do at 19 on a nothing budget, then I can’t wait to see what she’s capable of with even more to work with. And if she continues at this pace, she’ll be a household name in horror in no time.

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All of Us Strangers – Adriana’s Review

Reviews /

All of Us Strangers is the Sufjan Stevens song of movies. It’s sappy and tender and very gay and very sad. It’s full of ghosts. It’s haunted by loneliness and love. Some may find it a bit too sentimental, like the 80s power ballads scattered throughout its soundtrack. But I found that it balances those feelings very well, never veering too far into treacly territory. For all of its fantastical elements, it always has one foot on the ground, rooted in feelings that ring true and deep. I think there’s a reason I keep comparing the movie to music, and that’s because it moves with a fluidity that feels musical, moving in and out of “reality”, and into dreams and fantasy and imagination and memory and drug-induced escapism, until the boundaries between all of the above slip away. Music plays an important role in the movie, too, emotionally tying Andrew Scott’s Adam to his deceased parents and giving voice to feelings that characters in the movie either can’t or won’t put into words. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal give incredible performances here, portraying two men who meet and connect in the near-empty London sky-rise they both live in. Scott is one of the most expressive actors I can think of, and Mescal has found a niche for himself playing soft-spoken young men with barely-contained sadness spilling over behind their eyes, and he’s so good at it. I can’t wait to see him do something wildly different, like a comedy or an action movie (Gladiator 2, let’s goooo). Not because I’ll ever get tired of him playing sad boys, but because he’s such a great actor, and I think it would be fun to see him go against type. I also have to mention Claire Foy and Jamie Bell as Adam’s parents, both of whom (but especially Foy) give fantastic performances in roles that could have, in other hands, felt somewhat silly or unbelievable but end up being very complex and moving. Ultimately, this is a profoundly sad and lonely movie, about people who have trouble letting go of the past and letting other people in. At the risk of revealing too much about myself, it’s a movie that spoke to me on a very personal level and moved me to tears in the dark of a theatre full of people. It’s also a beautiful ode to love—familial love and queer love and the profound impact we can have on the lives of the people around us, if only we allow ourselves to do so. Verdict This is a beautiful ghost story about reckoning with the past, moving on, and opening yourself up to love in all its forms, centred around four incredible performances. If you’re a starry-eyed emotional masochist like me, and you love movies about grief and loneliness and sad people, with the aesthetic and emotional vibes of an 80s power ballad, you will probably love this!

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Bottoms – Adriana’s Review

Reviews /

When I was a teenager, a movie like Bottoms wouldn’t have existed. I was 12 years old when Superbad (2007) came out, and I remember sneaking in to see it in theatres with one of my best friends. I’ve seen Superbad more times than I can count, and it still feels like one of the genre-defining high school comedies of my generation. But to see a raunchy, R-rated high school comedy centred around two queer girls would have been unthinkable to 12-year-old me.   Bottoms follows the aforementioned queer girls as they try to hook up with their popular cheerleader crushes by starting an after-school fight club. Lesbian protagonists aside, the movie feels in many ways like a 2000s-era comedy—right down to the blooper reel in the end credits. I don’t mean that as an insult, though. The movie is as much indebted to 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) as it is to Fight Club (1999), and it’s made for the kind of people who think both are masterpieces in their own ways. In other words, me. I am absolutely the target audience for this movie, so, of course, I loved it. Everything from nods to Fincher and cult classics like But I’m A Cheerleader (1999) to the music, with a soundtrack by Charli XCX, feel purposeful and eclectic. Yet, the movie never feels stale or derivative. That’s largely thanks to writer/director Emma Seligman and a fantastic cast, led by Rachel Sennott (who co-wrote the film with Seligman) and Ayo Edebiri, both of whom are oozing with talent and destined to be absolute stars. High school comedies like this, and comedies more broadly, feel like they’ve become fewer and farther between in the age of big-budget superhero blockbusters. The only recent analog that comes to mind is 2019’s Booksmart, which is a great movie in its own right. But Bottoms is weirder, wilder, and gayer. Its humour is silly and specific, and the movie deftly moves between balls-to-the-wall absurdism and over-the-top violence to more grounded moments of friendship and tender adolescent romance. That it strikes that balance and still manages to be very funny is an impressive feat. The movie is full of jokes that stem not just from the excellent script, but also down to the way actors deliver lines or facial expressions to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it production design details in the background to certain needle drops. At the time of writing, Bottoms has made just under $12 million USD at the box office. That doesn’t sound like much, especially on the heels of Barbie, which has been breaking box office records left and right and has crossed well over the $1 billion mark. But it’s a success story nonetheless. Bottoms debuted on just ten screens, but managed to earn the highest per-theatre average on a ten or more screen opening since Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). The movie never even got an international release. I feel lucky to have even been able to catch it on the big screen (twice). Verdict In the age of big-budget blockbusters, a relatively small-scale high school sex comedy centred on two “ugly, untalented gays” feels like a breath of fresh air. We need more stories that come from specific voices and unique perspectives, even ones that are silly or violent or over-the-top. I think one of the reasons I loved this movie so much is that it feels like the kind of movie that my friends and I would have made, with the sole goal of trying to make each other laugh. It’s the kind of movie I would have snuck in to see as a kid, had it existed back then—the kind of movie I would watch over and over again. In fact, I probably will.

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