Queens of the Dead starts, as so many wild stories do, with a sketchy app-initiated hookup.

Drag artist Z Queen (played by Julie J) makes a pitstop at her church on the way home from a night out. She drops some cash into the donation box, says a few words of prayer…and gets a notification from the Grindr-esque hookup app Skins saying that someone in the building swiped right on her profile. Intrigued, she goes to look for the mystery suitor, but instead of a casual encounter, she finds a zombie priest who promptly attacks her.

Brooklyn Drag Show Meets Zombie Apocalypse

In a Brooklyn warehouse, DJ and party organizer Dre (Katy O’Brian) is preparing for that night’s Easter-themed drag show, contending with drama between the performers, a backed-up toilet requiring the plumbing expertise of her brother-in-law Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker)—who is spectacularly ignorant about queer culture—, and her spacey but well-intentioned intern Kelsey (Jack Haven). When one of the headlining drag queens, Yasmine (Dominique Jackson), flakes in order to do a paid appearance at a vodka launch, her former friend Sam (Jaquel Spivey) shows up to resurrect his drag persona, Samoncé. Sam, now a nurse working with Dre’s wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome) at a local hospital, hasn’t performed in a while; the last time he was supposed to, at a major party that Dre organized, he got cold feet, forcing her to refund everyone’s tickets, amounting to $9,000. Sam is there now, though, ready to help Dre and perform with his drag mother Ginsey (Nina West).

But then, another problem arises: the zombie apocalypse hits New York. Now, as a horde of slow-moving but ravenous undead descend upon the warehouse, the group must put aside their personal conflicts and work together to survive.

In her directorial debut, Tina Romero serves up a delightful zombie horror-comedy that’s hilarious and heartfelt. Her film, co-written by Erin Judge and brought to life by an outstanding ensemble cast (rounded out with Shaunette Renée Wilson, Cheyenne Jackson, Samora la Perdida, and Becca Blackwell), is filled with quippy one-liners, energetic zombie scenes, and well-developed characters with believable relationships with each other. Costumes designed by David Tabbert and hair and makeup led by Mitchell Beck and Christina Grant, respectively, steal the spotlight. And yes, there are a few references to the OG zombie picture helmed by Romero’s father in the forms of an Impala named “Barbara”, a character quoting, “They’re coming for you, Barbara”, and the line, “This is not a George Romero movie.” Tom Savini even has a cameo appearance.

Most notable about Queens of the Dead is that it was clearly made specifically for queer audiences (in the best way!). In addition to the cast being populated by iconic queer and trans actors, there are drag culture references, cishet men getting tripped up by third-person singular pronouns, a butch power dyke wielding a power drill, and some raunchy humor: in one scene, an influencer’s presumably straight (or “straight”) boyfriend unwittingly simulates fellatio on a penis-shaped cake pop; in another, Kelsey—injured by a poorly-aimed axe meant for a zombie—tells her worried fiancée Pops (the aforementioned power dyke, played by Margaret Cho) that she wasn’t bitten, but instead has an “axe wound”, leading to one of the queens telling her not to brag about it. The sound bite of Kelsey saying, “I got an axe wound”, is sampled and remixed into an upbeat, danceable tune that plays during the closing credits.

Interwoven with the comedy and zombie-fighting scenes are plot points that explore real issues that impact queer and trans communities, such as pervasive drug use in drag scenes and healthcare trauma among trans people. The character Nico (played by Tomas Matos) is a drug dealing (and using) dancer and aspiring drag queen who feels ostracized and disrespected as an artist by Ginsey and Sam. Meanwhile, Lizzy’s patient at the hospital—and companion as they outrun zombies—is a young trans woman named Jane (played by Eve Lindley) who has been getting her HRT from dealers rather than licensed doctors. It’s important to note that Romero and Judge don’t showcase these issues through a moralistic lens; they’re presented in a matter-of-fact and deeply compassionate way.

Although there could have been a bit more gore, overall, Queens of the Dead is a thoroughly entertaining zombie flick that also manages to be deeply comforting for queer viewers. The central cast is funny without being relegated to the butt of the joke; the lesbian characters aren’t sexualized for the titillation of straight male audiences; the creativity and DIY prowess for which drag queens are famous is highlighted in the fresh context of zombie-fighting weaponry and armor. The characters are messy, complicated, and bitchy. They’re also smart, resilient, and loving. They, like the film as a whole, slay in every sense of the word.

You’ll never change my mind on this: handing over the reins of a horror movie franchise to a special effects artist is always the right choice. Case in point, The Fly 2.

Lighting the monsters, blocking them, choreographing their motions and how they pass through the sets they’re inhabiting, and even understanding character motivations and emotions and how to portray them. They have skills that transfer over to head-on directing and dealing with actors quite nicely that we often overlook.

Today we aren’t talking about Screaming Mad George’s foray into gooey sci-fi with The Guyver, or Alec Gillis’s viral crowdfunded Harbinger Down, although I do hope to cover both of those sooner than later.

We’ll be touching on the unsung and unsuspectingly great sequel to David Cronenberg’s classic, The Fly 2. Picking up where the previous film left off, Veronica’s nightmare has come true: her child by Seth Brundle, the genius scientist turned insect abomination by his own ambitions, has come to term.

Bartok Industries, the company Seth worked for, has taken the child Martin Brundle into their stead to study his rapid growth and abnormal intelligence. Suffering from the same symptoms as his father, Martin attempts to get the telepods working again in a desperate ploy to repair his damaged DNA. Things, as expected, go horribly wrong.

While this might seem like a straightforward sequel, its quirks make it anything but normal. The Fly 2 eschews much of its previous film’s more surreal and philosophical qualities, exploring the nature of humanity, and leans into the campy science fiction aspects to match its body horror.

Tonal Shifts and Quirky Energy

That doesn’t make it a less worthy sequel, but it does make it unexpectedly off kilter. Tonally, it’s a screwball, starting with some wildly nasty pregnancy horror as we see Martin’s birth in a larval form. Then, for roughly the first 30 minutes, it bounces between children’s adventure film energy, to a college romance, back to horror occasionally before settling into its sci-fi horror nest.

The sharp contrast between the especially dark moments like Martin interacting with a failed telepod experiment and him dancing with his girlfriend give The Fly 2 a very odd energy that in some aspects I’d describe as off the wall, which at the very least makes it more memorable.

Issues with the script itself become exacerbated by a lack of strong voices; with no Jeff Goldblum and a regrettably absent Geena Davis, the only really notably great performance is Lee Richardson who plays the mustache-twirlingly devilish Anton Bartok with all the corporate nastiness of Ned Beatty in Network.

Credit is due to a returning John Getz, whose portrayal of a now physically and emotionally scarred Stathis Borans is a fun challenge he embraces.  

While the film does spin its wheels with an honestly completely uncompelling romance for a good chunk of its runtime (think Dan and Megan from Re-Animator with no Herbert to play off of; dreadfully unimportant in the grand scheme of things and not enough humor to derive a good time from), this is alleviated by the rest of the film focusing on the slimy degeneration of our main character, as Martin’s mutations are good and truly off the rails.

Director Chris Walas and the rest of Amalgamated Dynamics work here is every bit as fantastic as the first film, bringing us plenty of foul fluid and far-gone flesh to make you nauseous. Martin’s slow transformation I would argue is even better than Seth’s, even if the scenes of Martin lamenting and later accepting his change lacks a lot of the dark humor that came with Goldblum’s ambitions to become the first insect politician.

The technical skill on display with this makeup plays best on screen in the film’s climax, featuring the brand-new creature in the Martinfly; it has a greater range of motion than the original Brundlefly, and the sprawling industrial facility the finale takes place in takes advantage of that.

Slamming through windows, spewing acid vomit, and swiping with chitinous claws should sell you on the twenty-some minutes of mayhem Martinfly causes.

The Fly 2 isn’t a masterpiece, but this is where my pedantic nature shows; as I said in the opening, it is a masterfully crafted film. It’s a truly admirable attempt at a sequel trying to follow up on one of the greatest horror films of all time, made by one of the most talented special effects artists in American film history. Cronenberg’s fingerprint may not be on it, but it shows a good deal of respect for the original creation it is working off of without turning into a complete retread.

And for that, it deserves much more attention and love than it gets.