Editorials
Queer the Walking Dead: The Rise of the “Gay Zombie” Subgenre
Why Do Queer People Resonate with the Zombie?
For a queer audience, the liminal state (defined by the dictionary as “the quality of being between two stages or places”) is our ability to see, internalize, and comprehend both sides of what a zombie movie has to offer.
“The particular thing that a zombie has in liminality is that they literally are us.” says Petrocelli, adding that “zombies, as liminal monsters, are as close as you can get to who we are.” After all, what is a zombie other than a human standing just on the other side of death? Whereas many other monsters of fiction have a supernatural transition of sorts, a keystone of zombie lore centers on the idea of how quickly zombies can go to people we know and love…to other. In that respect, there’s an aspect of zombie cinema that allows audiences to have a broader point of view in relation to the monster.
The curious thing about making a film within a subgenre you’ve been watching your entire life is that suddenly, and without warning, you start to look at it in a multitude of vastly different ways. When setting out alongside my intrepid cast & crew to shoot our forthcoming feature film, There’s a Zombie Outside, we knew we were approaching the tropes of the living dead a little bit sideways. For one thing, in comparison to the oft-expected shambling hordes, our movie only had one zombie… and it also happened to be deeply and unapologetically queer.
THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE
Exploring the Gay Zombie Trope
Utilizing our titular creature to explore notions of “queer listlessness,” as well as our tenuous relationship with art, I became deeply aware that I was asking audiences to meet us somewhere slightly different than the expected farmhouse with survivors trapped inside.
Yet, as I continued to survey the landscape of time-honored zombie tropes, I couldn’t help but notice that for every film adhering to convention, there were exceptional outliers. Movies with titles like 1995’s La Cage Aux Zombies, 2009’s George: A Zombie Intervention, and 2011’s Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings all explored risen-from-the-grave identity politics or presented flamboyant flesh-eating farce with flair.
Such films, and numerous others, provide evidence of an undeniable interest in zombies on the part of queer filmmakers and viewers alike. Interestingly, among creators, there’s a notable preponderance of gay-identifying men who gravitate to the subject matter. Yet, in most cases, beyond the tacit agreement of the living dead as tool for commentary, these individuals seem all too willing to take their flesh-eaters into a multitude of varying directions that their straight counterparts dare not tread.
In many ways, the unique divergence of the queer zombie has effectively allowed it to “come out of the coffin” as its own subgenre.
However, like the pop culture redefining reanimated corpses that came before them, there’s more to this splintered classification than mere surface-level assignation.
Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008)
The Queerification of the Zombie
With Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and John A. Russo undeniably reconstructed how we culturally think of zombies. The “Romero Zombie,” as it would come to be known, became the propulsion point forward for nearly all living dead media that would follow. Indeed, so much of the “mainstream” zombie subgenre strives to emulate the tropes of what Romero put forth, modern audiences unwaveringly accept this blueprint as how such movies are done.
Yet, for Bruce LaBruce, award-winning filmmaker of Otto; or, Up with Dead People and L.A. Zombie, there’s a crucial element to Romero’s work that many modern filmmakers overlook.
“Romero made the political zombie,” says LaBruce, “which is one thing people don’t do so much when they’re emulating him. Night of the Living Dead has a Black lead that is shot by the police because they think he’s a zombie…or maybe they don’t. It’s a total political allegory. Romero’s subsequent films are a critique of consumer capitalism. There’s a lot of class and race representation in his work. I think it’s too bad that more people don’t emulate those aspects of his filmmaking.”
…and while it’s true that many modern mainstream zombie films may eschew that sense of allegory, the truth remains that queer artists are often political simply by virtue of existence.
For Chris Diani, filmmaker of Creatures from the Pink Lagoon, the plight of zombie movie protagonists reflects this circumstance.
“To a gay man, the basic set-up of every zombie movie is frighteningly familiar: A group of scrappy underdogs has to use empathy, intellect, wit, and resilience to face off against brainless, shambling slobs dressed in last year’s fashions,” Diani says. “What is that, if not a monster movie version of queers clashing with rabid right-wing protesters at Pride?”
It’s a point that Dr. Heather O. Petrocelli, author of Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator, seems to reiterate.
“Even in this era of increased acceptance for queer people, we’re living in a liminal state of precarity,” says Petrocelli. “The most recent backlash shows us that it’s not just three steps forward…and then three more steps forward. You can get your ass knocked back. Progress is not a linear track.”
All things undead body politic considered, in many ways, it’s Petrocelli’s inference of liminality wherein the notion of a separate queer zombie subgenre really begins to take shape.
L.A. Zombie (2010)
Why Do Queer People Resonate with the Zombie?
For a queer audience, the liminal state (defined by the dictionary as “the quality of being between two stages or places”) is our ability to see, internalize, and comprehend both sides of what a zombie movie has to offer.
“The particular thing that a zombie has in liminality is that they literally are us.” says Petrocelli, adding that “zombies, as liminal monsters, are as close as you can get to who we are.”
After all, what is a zombie other than a human standing just on the other side of death? Whereas many other monsters of fiction have a supernatural transition of sorts, a keystone of zombie lore centers on the idea of how quickly zombies can go to people we know and love…to other.
In that respect, there’s an aspect of zombie cinema that allows audiences to have a broader point of view in relation to the monster.
“Zombie films flip focus,” says Petrocelli. “You can identify with the zombie or, depending on the movie, you can identify with the person who has the animated masses coming for them. That’s the point of liminality – you don’t have a foothold on either side of the threshold.”
For Bruce LaBruce, the idea of seeing things from the perspective of the ostracized living dead could certainly lend itself to the appeal.
“The disenfranchisement and outsiderness of queers is all very conducive to the zombie trope,” he says, further adding that while other monsters may have gotten a queer read much sooner, there’s something particularly interesting about the zombie’s gay revolution.
“The vampire mythology really tied into ideas of the sexual predator, so of course it was aligned with a gay subtext or they were presented as bisexual. But to transpose that onto the zombie myth is a bit more of a leap, in a way,” says LaBruce. “It’s not so sexy on the surface. The monster is much more of a deadened creature. There’s a bit of necessary necromantic element when you sexualize a zombie…but it’s still kind of the romantic idea of a disenfranchised character who doesn’t fit in.”
George’s Intervention (2009)
Using Monsters to Explore the Monstrous
Explorations of otherness via the monstrous aside, for a creature so closely tied in lore to contagion, there’s undeniably another aspect that those examining the queer community’s connection to zombie narratives can’t deny.
“The rise of pandemics in modern culture definitely had an influence on the zombie in film,” says Dr. Heather Petrocelli.
“It’s not difficult to make the connection between AIDS and zombies,” says Bruce LaBruce. “The fact that gays became pathologized because of AIDS and treated sort of like monsters – it’s a body withering disease where the ravages were so extreme that people were turned into almost living corpses.”
It’s well-documented that many queer creatives channeled their rage and grief over the seismic loss of the AIDS epidemic into art, and for those working within the horror genre, it should come as no surprise that such emotions were filtered through a dark lens of the fantastic. The monsters became symbolic of monstrous circumstances and stories of survivors in the face of overwhelming death became all the more poignant.
Yet, there is often such focus on this particular chapter of history and how it is channeled through the lens of horror that some critics overlook the crucial element of empowerment and escapism retreating into monster stories can provide.
Speaking on this distinction, Chris Diani illustrates how, ultimately, versatility is key.
“It’s the way zombie narratives can be stretched to address countless other struggles faced by the queer community that makes them so attractive to gay filmmakers,” Diani says. “A gay zombie film can be an AIDS allegory, an anti-capitalistic screed, a glimpse at the outsider experience, or a campy takedown of cruising culture. With all these takes and more to explore, it’s not surprising to see the enduring appeal of zombie films to queer horror fans.”
Perhaps nothing highlights Diani’s point regarding this burgeoning subgenre’s flexibility more than filmmaker Michael Simon’s aptly titled Gay Zombie, which focuses primarily on a topic often unexpected in flesh-eating stories: Love.
“When I made Gay Zombie, I thought it would be hilarious and meaningful that the lead character only felt comfortable coming out after becoming a zombie – much more than in his waking life,” says Simon.
…and, although there’s plenty of blood and guts, Michael Simon asserts that his vision of the living dead is less about monstrosity, and more about self-acceptance.
Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (2011)
Can the Zombie Be Empowering?
“In the simplest of terms – [the message] is that it’s never too late to find love and be yourself. And to be comfortable with yourself,” says Simon.
In so many ways, this is what sets the queer zombie subgenre apart – the idea that we can rise up from the earth and be so much more. To be queer in this world is to always be in transition, to be both the perceived monster and that which must survive the night.
To be the other. To be the lover. To be the revolution.
Yes, George Romero set the mold. His vision used monsters to buck the system…and remind us that sometimes the system is the monster that needs bucking.
But to be queer is to know that we don’t have to shamble forward aimlessly. We can deviate.
Whether Night, Dawn, or Day. We can live. Kinda.
…and for any naysayers who think that the queer zombie’s ability to represent so much more than mere monster lessens its bite, allow me to leave you with this parting thought from Michael Simon, who says,
“Zombies, like gays, will eat your ass before they take shit from anyone!”
***
Be sure to keep an eye on Michael Varrati’s next movie, THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE, which will be hitting the film festival circuit soon, and looks incredible!
I was late to the Radio Silence party. However, I do not let that stop me from being one of the loudest people at the function now. I randomly decided to see Ready or Not in theaters one afternoon in 2019 and walked out a better person for it. The movie introduced me to the work of a team that would become some of my favorite current filmmakers. It also confirmed that getting married is the worst thing one can do. That felt very validating as someone who doesn’t buy into the needing to be married to be complete narrative.
Ready or Not is about a fucked up family with a fucked up tradition. The unassuming Grace (Samara Weaving) thinks her new in-laws are a bit weird. However, she’s blinded by love on her wedding day. She would never suspect that her groom, Alex (Mark O’Brien), would lead her into a deadly wedding night. So, she heads downstairs to play a game with the family, not knowing that they will be hunting her this evening. This is one of the many ways I am different from Grace. I watch enough of the news to know the husband should be the prime suspect, and I have been around long enough to know men are the worst. I also have a commitment phobia, so the idea of walking down the aisle gives me anxiety.
Grace Under Fire
Ready or Not is a horror comedy set on a wealthy family’s estate that got overshadowed by Knives Out. I have gone on record multiple times saying it’s the better movie. Sadly, because it has fewer actors who are household names, people are not ready to have that conversation. However, I’m taking up space this month to talk about catharsis, so let me get back on track. One of the many ways this movie is better than the latter is because of that sweet catharsis awaiting us at the end.
This movie puts Grace through it and then some. Weaving easily makes her one of the easiest final girls to root for over a decade too. From finding out the man she loves has betrayed her, to having to fight off the in-laws trying to kill her, as she is suddenly forced to fight to survive her wedding night. No one can say that Grace doesn’t earn that cigarette at the end of the film. As she sits on the stairs covered in the blood of what was supposed to be her new family, she is a relatable icon. As the unseen cop asks what happened to her, she simply says, “In-laws.” It’s a quick laugh before the credits roll, and “Love Me Tender” by Stereo Jane makes us dance and giggle in our seats.
Ready or Not Proves That Maybe She’s Better Off Alone
It is also a moment in which Grace is one of many women who survives marriage. She comes out of the other side beaten but not broken. Grace finally put herself, and her needs first, and can breathe again in a way she hasn’t since saying I do. She fought kids, her parents-in-law, and even her husband to escape with her life. She refused to be a victim, and with that cigarette, she is finally free and safe. Grace is back to being single, and that’s clearly for the best.
This Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy script is funny on the surface, even before you start digging into the subtext. The fact that Ready or Not is a movie where the happy ending is a woman being left alone is not wasted on me, though. While Grace thought being married would make her happy, she now has physical and emotional wounds to remind her that it’s okay to be alone.
One of the things I love about this current era of Radio Silence films is that the women in these projects are not the perfect victims. Whether it’s Ready or Not, Abigail, or Scream (2022), or Scream VI, the girls are fighting. They want to live, they are smart and resourceful, and they know that no one is coming to help them. That’s why I get excited whenever I see Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s names appear next to a Guy Busick co-written script. Those three have cracked the code to give us women protagonists that are badasses, and often more dangerous than their would-be killers when push comes to shove.
Ready or Not Proves That Commitment is Scarier Than Death
So, watching Grace run around this creepy family’s estate in her wedding dress is a vision. It’s also very much the opposite of what we expect when we see a bride. Wedding days are supposed to be champagne, friends, family, and trying to buy into the societal notion that being married is what we’re supposed to aspire to as AFABs. They start programming us pretty early that we have to learn to cook to feed future husbands and children.
The traditions of being given away by our fathers, and taking our husbands’ last name, are outdated patriarchal nonsense. Let’s not even get started on how some guys still ask for a woman’s father’s permission to propose. These practices tell us that we are not real people so much as pawns men pass off to each other. These are things that cause me to hyperventilate a little when people try to talk to me about settling down.
Marriage Ain’t For Everybody
I have a lot of beef with marriage propaganda. That’s why Ready or Not speaks to me on a bunch of levels that I find surprising and fresh. Most movies would have forced Grace and Alex to make up at the end to continue selling the idea that heterosexual romance is always the answer. Even in horror, the concept that “love will save the day” is shoved at us (glares at The Conjuring Universe). So, it’s cool to see a movie that understands women can be enough on their own. We don’t need a man to complete us, and most of the time, men do lead to more problems. While I am no longer a part-time smoker, I find myself inhaling and exhaling as Grace takes that puff at the end of the film. As a woman who loves being alone, it’s awesome to be seen this way.
The Cigarette of Singledom
We don’t need movies to validate our life choices. However, it’s nice to be acknowledged every so often. If for no other reason than to break up the routine. I’m so tired of seeing movies that feel like a guy and a girl making it work, no matter the odds, is admirable. Sometimes people are better when they separate, and sometimes divorce saves lives. So, I salute Grace and her cathartic cigarette at the end of her bloody ordeal.
I cannot wait to see what single shenanigans she gets into in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. I personally hope she inherited that money from the dead in-laws who tried her. She deserves to live her best single girl life on a beach somewhere. Grace’s marriage was a short one, but she learned a lot. She survived it, came out the other side stronger, richer, and knowing that marriage isn’t for everybody.
I’ve come to the kind of grim conclusion that sooner or later we’re all going to succumb to horror franchise fatigue. Bear with me, this editorial is more stream of consciousness than most of the ones I’ve written for Horror Press. For those unaware, the forthcoming Camp Crystal Lake show spent a short period of time shooting at a beloved local North Jersey restaurant near me in August. This meant progress for the A24 project that has been radio silent for a while; it also meant no rippers while it was closed for filming, but who said Jason’s reign of terror would be without consequence?
When Horror Franchise Fatigue Becomes An Issue
My friends mentioned it on an idle afternoon, and I carried that conversation over to another friend later that week. It inevitably turned into what all conversations of long-lived franchises do. Talking about how far the series had come, how influential it was, and how it died. Or at least, died without a death certificate. Nothing will keep a studio from coming back to a franchise if that’s where the money is, barring legal troubles and copyright shenanigans.
Revisiting Friday the 13th: A Franchise Rewatch Gone Wrong
As I fondly thought about the Friday series, I was spurred to watch the films. I would watch it all, from start to finish, all twelve movies. Not for any particular article, though the planned process was similar. They’re fascinating films that were both helped and harmed by their immense financial success, so they were as good as any franchise to analyze the changes in. I would note the difference between directors, the shift in tone. How cultural consciousness changed the films as they went on. I would dissect them to see what was at the heart of these movies.
I got about 15 minutes into Part 4 before stopping my marathon.
Horror Franchise Fatigue and the Loss of Enjoyment
Now, this might sound strange. I liked The Final Chapter, I like pretty much all the Friday films (especially the worst ones). And I know that I enjoy them, not from some abstract nostalgia driven memories, but because I had seen several of them recently enough to know that. What it came down to was a very simple question of whether or not I was having fun watching them. The enjoyment was the point, but by the fifth day, I wasn’t feeling anything. I wanted to love the Friday the 13th films the same way I did when I previously watched them, but it just didn’t happen.
And I was confused, how a franchise I had enjoyed so much had just become so unmoving. It wasn’t the experience I had had before. But the truth was that experience couldn’t be restored, and that desire to bring it back was actively harming my enjoyment of the films.
Why Standalone Horror Experiences Still Matter
In contrast, I showed my favorite giallo film to some friends recently. Dario Argento’s Opera is a film I’ve seen plenty of times, and it was a big hit thanks to its Grand Guignol sensibilities and one-of-a-kind cinematography. As far as tales about an opera singer being forced to witness murders go, it got a warm reception. It was crass, it was odd, it was provocative.
And watching my friends’ reactions, from intrigue to disgust to enjoyment, was the exact kind of experience I was hoping for. It was a memorable experience that stuck with me as much as seeing the film for the first time did.
We Don’t Love Horror Franchises, We Love the Experience
It may sound ignorant, but largely, I feel we don’t love franchises. We love the experience. We love the feeling of seeing something come together over the course of hours, the novelty of characters growing and changing if it’s allowed by the scripts. The special emotion invoked when you spend so much time with a piece of media; it’s the same emotion that gets you hooked on a good TV show.
Now for some of you, this is splitting hairs. But I think the core of this is important to recognize: the franchise is just a vessel for the experiences the media provides. It’s shorthand for what you’ve felt and how you feel, a signifier rather than what’s really being signified. The Friday, and Nightmare, and Halloween “series”, as concepts are abstract enough to mean a million different things to a million different viewers, but at the end of the day they are all a collection of viewing experiences to someone.
Fan Culture, Shared Horror Memories, and Closure
Those experiences are the core of “fan culture”. We love how our experiences link with those of others, registering flashes of recognition at a turn of phrase or a reference to a scene. That nebulous tangling of thoughts and feelings with other people is at the essence of shared enjoyment. And if you’re lucky enough, we love to see the book close on a franchise. To see a film series end, having completed its journey is a reward of its own.
But unfortunately, we often don’t get the privilege of watching a series end gracefully or even end at all. The Halloween series and The Exorcist series with their latest entries are obvious examples, and they’ve put the two franchises at arm’s length for me. But they’re far from the only ones.
Scream, Legacy Characters, and the Cost of Overextension
I especially don’t think I can return to the Scream films for a good long while. Putting aside the absolute trash fire made by Spyglass Entertainment firing its lead, then rushing a 7th film so badly they lost the Radio Silence team, I had already tapped out the minute I had heard the film’s premise. If there ever was a horror protagonist who should have stayed retired, it was Sidney Prescott.
All respect to Neve Campbell for finally getting her paycheck, but I can’t think of something less appealing than Sidney coming back. I’ve always been a Scream 3 purist, so I firmly believe that she shouldn’t have been in any of the films after that. She had gotten her happy ending, and left horror as one of the greatest of all time.
But then dangling a legacy character of that significance over a shallow inflatable pool for a third time, and treating it as shark infested waters, just feels ridiculous. The trailer that dropped for it did very little to assuage the notion that it would be anything but predictable.
This isn’t to say I’ve written off Scream entirely, but familiarity in this case has bred some level of contempt. I can identify pretty clearly what I loved about the experience that the Scream franchise used to offer, and this is not it. It’s made me more or less sulky about what it has to offer now; that is, very little of the novelty and shock factor I loved it for.
Why It’s Okay to Walk Away From Horror Franchises You Love
All of these thoughts and encounters led to a series of questions I kept revolving through. Why do we play a game of loyalty to something so abstract as “the franchise”? Is the collection of experiences we attach to a series supposed to be an emotional wage we’re paid to stick around? Is that payment enough? Why should we keep watching a series if we’ve fallen out of love with what it has to offer?
I know as much as you do that the answer to that last question is “we shouldn’t”, and yet we still do. For those of us who have fallen into a similar pessimistic state about the franchises we enjoy, I guess this is all just a way of stating the obvious: it’s okay to leave a series behind. If it’s not fun or engaging or challenging, you can and should set it aside, at least temporarily. While I’m not a proponent of killing fond memories or condemning all nostalgia, that’s just the problem: I want to feel something more than I want to remember that feeling.
Choosing New Horror Over Nostalgia
The old experience of media we once loved can be nice, but there are more new experiences out there than we can have in a single lifetime. We have a near infinite amount to choose from. So, if we’re fortunate, one of them belongs to a series we love, and we can enjoy it once more. But for those of us who don’t have that luck, consider this a reminder that there is a lot more than these familiar faces to see. Next time you feel down about a series you miss or find yourself unable to continue watching, reach for something new. Something odd. Something you haven’t seen. It might just help.
Happy watching, horror fans.
The Horror Press Podcast Episode 54: Heated Rivalry & Yahtzee
‘Sleepy Hollow’ Review: Seeing Really Is Believing
‘Ready or Not’ and the Cathartic Cigarette of a Relatable Final Girl
‘Carrie’ Review: A Look At Two Adaptations
The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in January 2026
The Best Horror You Can Stream on Netflix in January 2026
‘The Taking of Deborah Logan’ Review: An Overlooked Gem
‘Dry January’ Review: The Perfect Short Film for a Long Month
‘Lair of the White Worm’ Review: A Cult Folk Horror Classic
‘Snakes on a Plane’: A First-Time Watch Review
‘The People Under the Stairs’ Review: A Brilliantly Bizarre Horror Classic
Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ and The Story of William Afton Explained
Glen and Glenda: Don Mancini’s Reverence for Queerness in ‘Seed of Chucky’ (2004)
‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
V/H/S Franchise Ranked, Best to Worst
Everything You Need to Know About Jason Voorhees
The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
[REVIEW] ‘Cherry Falls’ (1999) Brittany Murphy Shines in This Cult Classic Slasher
