Tag: George A. Romero

Tina Romero on Her Fantastically Fun Zombie Movie ‘Queens of the Dead’

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What if the zombie apocalypse broke out in Brooklyn—and infiltrated the queer nightlife scene? That’s the very fun and sparkle-infused premise of Queens of the Dead, which opens this week and is directed by Tina Romero—yes, the daughter of zombie movie legend George A. Romero.

io9 talked to Tina Romero all about her debut feature, including what it’s like carrying on her father’s splattery legacy and the importance of seeing joyful queer representation onscreen.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: Growing up with George Romero as a dad, how did that affect your perception of zombie movies?

Tina Romero: I tell people I sat on a zombie’s lap before I met the mall Santa. Zombies were just like a fact of life. Like, Santa Claus exists and zombies exist, and that’s just how it is. I also say that I’m a kid who grew up on Pippi Longstocking and Bye Bye Birdie and West Side Story and ‘80s Disney movies, but then I would tiptoe past a terrifying poster on the way to the bathroom at night or Fluffy’s crate from Creepshow. So my world has always been a very strange mashup of dark and light.

I think that is at the core of my creativity. I’m an edgy cheeseball, and I like things that are light and playful and colorful and also have a bit of a gory edge. And my dad was very much the same. He made some dark, nihilistic, scary movies, but he was such a gentle giant, and he also loved the cheesy stuff. We watched a lot of movies together. That was our primary form of bonding. And he would unabashedly weep when he was moved. And I think that really impacted me and showed me the power of movies, the power of film to move people. That’s what I always picked up on: movies can move people and they can provoke real-life empathy. That was my guiding light as far as what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to move people with movies.

io9: Was there any hesitation about making your feature film debut a zombie movie because you knew people would immediately compare you with your dad—or was that sort of the reason why you wanted to make a zombie movie first?

Romero: I think it’s both. As [Katy O’Brian’s character] Dre says in the movie, it’s always both. Certainly there was some hesitation, big shoes to fill, and fear of comparison, which is why I didn’t want to touch the genre unless I could do it in a way that felt authentically me. So when the concept came to me, it was just a very full-body yes. The idea of getting into the zombie genre through the lens of queer nightlife just felt like, this is exactly how I want to introduce myself as a filmmaker because this is a world that I know and people that I care about; I can tell [this] story authentically.

Julie J and Ahmad Maksoud in ‘Queens of the Dead.’ © Courtesy of Shannon Madden. An Independent Film Company and Shudder Release.

And I love zombies; I know zombies; I grew up with zombies. So let’s mash up these worlds, and let me introduce myself as my own filmmaker while getting to also carry forward the monster that my dad created into 2025 with a female perspective, with a queer perspective. It just felt really right. Once the idea hit me, I knew that this was the perfect first feature for me.

io9: Queerness has been present in horror movies since horror movies began, though until the last few decades it was more subtext and suggestion. Queens of the Dead is very overt, of course. How does it feel to be carrying on that legacy and getting to be very free about it?

Romero: Oh, it feels incredible. I’m so excited that Shudder and IFC are putting this movie out in 2025. It feels like such an important time to, as you said, like it’s not subtext, it’s out there. We are here; the queers are here. We’re fighting zombies, we’re surviving, which is very much how the world feels right now.

And I’m really proud of the fact that this isn’t a movie that is showing queerness in a bleak way. It’s celebratory. It’s joyful. I feel like that’s what we need as queer people right now: we need to celebrate ourselves and we need to have some fun. And we need to feel the joy. So it feels incredibly important to me to be able to do this. My dad’s movies [had] a history of representing marginalized communities. And I’m so proud that I can, in 2025, do this for the queer community through the Romero zombie monster.

I hope this is a place where people can come and feel celebrated instead of erased and have a little reprieve from the fucking news cycle that just every single day is so scary. It is a horror film, but it’s also lighthearted. I wanted to make a film that people left the theater feeling a little hope in their heart and a pep in their step and a little fighting spirit. Because we have to keep fighting, and we have to stick together as a community and get through this, whatever this is.

io9: George Romero’s movies always had social commentary front and center; for instance, Dawn of the Dead’s shopping-mall zombies and consumerism. Queens of the Dead definitely seems to be making a statement about social media: influencers, dating apps, Snapchat, being too online, and being overly connected to our phones. What made you want to zero in on that theme?

Romero: Oh, because I am just so freaked out about how my own brain has changed in the, whatever, 11 years that it’s been since I’ve had a smartphone. I feel it. I feel my brain changing. When I go to open Candy Crush on the train without even making that choice, it really freaks me out. I feel like it’s sucking my attention. It’s changing the ways that we interact—just the anxiety it provokes. It’s been bugging me for a long time, and it really does feel like when you walk around the streets of New York, everyone’s a phone zombie. It’s happening. We are all phone zombies out here.

[The theme] felt very natural to me. We wanted to stick to the Romero zombie monster rules: they are slow, they do not run. One bite turns you. You have to take out the brain to defeat the monster. And then I wanted to add this little thing, which I know my dad would have approved of, which is that they’re still responding to their devices.

I believe that we would still be responding to our devices in in the event of a zombie apocalypse because it’s innate. It’s not a choice. It’s a muscle thing. So that was very important to me. And also, I think that phones—as much as they are a tool, and there are plenty of good things that have come out of connecting online and finding community online—I also think they are separating us in a whole entirely new way. I think it’s causing more tension and causing more fighting. That’s also something I wanted to dig into with the character of Barry [played by Quinn Dunn-Baker]. Barry, the brother-in-law, is on very different podcasts and very different algorithms but ultimately has a lot more in common with this group of people than he realizes. And I think that’s kind of the case for all humans right now: we’re more mad at each other online than we need to be.

Katy O’Brian and Jack Haven in ‘Queens of the Dead.’ © Courtesy of Shannon Madden. An Independent Film Company and Shudder Release.

io9: The movie plays into zombie movie tropes—the sheltering in place, the weapons-gathering scene, and the “head shot” directive—but its setting and characters bring a new perspective. How conscious were you of including those familiar moments and aiming to subvert them?

Romero: I thought a lot about, okay, people are coming to this probably having seen a zombie film. So we don’t necessarily need to review all of the rules. But how can we remind people what they are while also treating the audience with the respect of, like, “You probably know what goes on in a zombie movie”? So there was a bit of a dance around how much we wanted to treat the audience as if they knew nothing or assuming most people would know about a zombie film and the rules of that.

It’s fun to play with the tropes and to queer them, you know? One of the first things I wanted to do was flip the script as far as the motley crew goes. Instead of having the token gay, we wanted to have all queer people with the one straight guy instead, and I love that. I think it really lends itself to a fun ride. And queer people are the funniest, most fun, most resilient, strongest, and most bound to survive. So it all felt so right to me.

And I personally think it’s very boring to kill zombies with guns; it’s so easy. So from the beginning, I was psyched about the concept of DIY weapons. What do they have in the club that they’re using to make armor? What are they fighting these zombies with and what does their armor look like? Because I do think drag in many ways is like armor. David Tabbert, the head of costumes, and I started talking about [the costumes for the final showdown] years before we started shooting. Like, what do their final showdown [outfits] look like and how are they both armor and drag?

Jaquel Spivey, Tomás Matos, and Nina West in ‘Queens of the Dead.’ © Courtesy of Shannon Madden. An Independent Film Company and Shudder Release.

io9: The look of the zombies is unlike anything I’ve seen before—they’re metallic and glamorous, which obviously suits the movie’s themes. What went into coming up with the monster make-up?

Romero: I think zombies are often so butch. They’re wearing jeans, they’ve got the gross rotting flesh. And I just knew that wasn’t right for this film. If we were gonna do this in the queer nightlife world, we had to make the zombies fabulous. So from the beginning I knew I wanted to put glitter in the blood and Christina Grant, head of makeup, really got the assignment right away.

I love the zombies in Dawn of the Dead; I love that they’re just painted green. I think that there’s something to that. I think you can trust your audience to be like, “In this world, this is what zombies look like. Come along for the ride.” That’s what my dad did in Dawn of the Dead, and I wanted to sort of expand upon that.

So we found the perfect shade of green, and then we found the perfect metallic shimmer to layer on top of that. We worked with our prosthetic mold maker to ensure that the masks left ample room for there to also be a fabulous eyeshadow look. We wanted to make sure that the cheekbones were giving cheekbones, because we wanted to layer glam makeup with the gore. That very much on the mood board from the beginning, the concept of glam gore.

Also, how can that invite people into this movie who maybe would be hesitant to go to a zombie flick? In this case, there’s some glam. There’s some glitter in the blood. Come over to this movie. You’re going to have a good time. It’s not going to be too gross. And it also just feels spiritually right for the world of queer nightlife. These zombies are freshly dead on a Saturday night in Bushwick. They’re wearing going-out looks.

io9: Last up, I have to ask you about Tom Savini’s cameo.

Romero: There are two really fun Romero cameos! In the hospital. Gaylen Ross from Dawn of the Dead is the doctor that bumps into Sam [played by Jaquel Spivey] in the hallway.

io9: I didn’t catch that one. That’s amazing!

Romero: Isn’t that fun? It’s an ensemble cast; there are not a lot of speaking roles that are outside of the main group. And I really wanted to have some fun Romero universe cameos. And Tom was—I did have to ask him more than once because he was very, he’s a busy guy. But he ultimately was like, “Yeah, I’ll do this for you.” And I am thrilled that he plays the mayor of New York City at a party. We shot it on Zooms and I think he’s the perfect choice. What can I say? It’s so fun that there’s a Tom Savini cameo in this movie. Also, he and his partner, Jason Baker at Callosum Studios, made the zombie baby puppet.

io9: Almost a third cameo!

Romero: Exactly, exactly.

Queens of the Dead opens October 24; you can check the film’s website to see where it’s playing near you.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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Cheryl Eddy

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October 23, 2025
Dawn of the Dead’s Gaylen Ross on Filming the Zombie Classic, Including Its Original Ending

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Fran (Gaylen Ross) heads to the mall to escape zombies in Dawn of the Dead.
Screenshot: United Film Distribution Company

George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead arrived 10 years after he invented the modern zombie movie with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. To mark the 45-year anniversary of its U.S. release in 1979—an international co-production, it world-premiered in Italy in 1978—star Gaylen Ross, who’s also in Romero and Stephen King’s 1982 anthology film Creepshow, reflected on her experiences making the movie and its enduring legacy.

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Speaking to Variety, Ross said she signed on to play Fran, a Philadelphia TV producer turned zombie-apocalypse survivor, before she even knew who Romero was. Once cast, she took an active role in helping shape the character. “It was an interesting dialogue that George and I had at the beginning about how are we going to make Fran not a victim, and part of the characters that were active?,” she recalled. “He rewrote it while we were working, because he also felt we needed to empower her more.”

Amid some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits about what it was like filming nights at a mall that was open for customers during the day—Dawn of the Dead had to take a pause when the Christmas decorations went up—and how Ross faked her way through an ice-skating sequence, the actor turned documentary filmmaker shared her memories of the film’s original ending. As horror fans have long known, Romero did not at first intend for Fran and Ken Foree’s character, Peter, to make a desperate yet hopeful escape. “We shot it! I prepared all day for it,” she said. “George was going to kill us off—Peter was going to put a gun to his head, and I was going to put my head through the blades of the helicopter. [Make-up artist Tom Savini] had already cast the head for that effect … but then the decision was that this was too dark an ending and that somebody had to survive. Whether or not anybody believes that we survived if I was driving a helicopter or not is another story.”

While Ross admits she was surprised Dawn of the Dead became a hit when it was released—and says its enduring impact is “incredible”—she knew all along that she was part of a special project. “What I learned from George wasn’t so much his horror vision, but a respect and a generosity to actors, giving them the space … the one thing that George had for everybody was a kindness and a respect. No matter how horrible the story was, he did that—and that’s why actors would return.”

Read the full interview with Gaylen Ross over at Variety.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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Cheryl Eddy

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May 24, 2024
Night of the Living Dead Offers a Prime Commentary on How Paying Respect to the Dead Is A Toll on the Living

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As the conversation escalates about what to do with “all these dead bodies” in a world with increasingly less space, one can’t help but look back on 1968’s Night of the Living Dead as a metaphor for how paying respect to the dead is a toll on the living. One that can end up costing a person their own life. In fact, it seems that a great many horror movies speak to the trope that all sources of pain stem from visiting a graveyard. For, despite wanting to “honor” the dead by going to a cemetery, it appears as though the dead want the space all to themselves, hence constantly haunting or outright attacking anyone who infiltrates it.

In George A. Romero’s seminal film, that “source of all pain” for the living is how the film immediately starts out, with Barbra (Judith O’Dea), the ultimate useless white woman, and her brother, Johnny (Russell Streiner), visiting their father’s grave in rural Pennsylvania—much to Johnny’s dismay. Especially since they drove three hours all the way from Pittsburgh to do it. Romero’s slow build to their drive into the cemetery is punctuated not only by the eerie Spencer Moore theme (“Driveway to the Cemetery”), but by the presence of an American flag whipping in the wind as Barbra and Johnny approach the site, where the burden of visiting a father they never really knew hangs heavy. That American flag waving over a dead body (buried beneath the headstone), at that time, serves an undeniable semiotic importance to spotlighting the bodies that kept coming back from Vietnam. This creating a larger, undercutting social commentary about how bodies become particularly immaterial when they’re racking up—treated so disposably—no matter how much people (read: the government) try to “respect” them by putting them in an “appropriate” environment and then essentially “worshiping” them. Or rather, their memory.

To the point of the Vietnam War infecting horror movie commentary during this period, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is also rife with Vietnam-oriented political symbolism. And yes, it also opens with a cemetery scene wherein the bodies have been desecrated. Hung up and fashioned into a grisly “corpse sculpture.” The horror that visits Barbra and Johnny while they visit the cemetery is, let’s say, slightly more subtle. With that first zombie appearing “harmless” enough…until he isn’t. It only adds to Johnny’s staunch belief that he’d rather be anywhere else than a spook show of a joint like this. Indeed, the moment they park, Johnny is already complaining to Barbra, telling her, “You think I wanna blow Sunday on a scene like this?” Ah, such 60s parlance to call a cemetery a “scene.” And yet, that’s precisely what it is. A manufactured “comfort” for the dead that’s supposed to benefit the living in that they can continue to “pay their respects” to those they’ve lost when, in reality, it becomes a cross to bear to keep visiting the cemetery regularly (especially if you’re not a kook or a spook who feels naturally at home there). Or as regularly as the distance will allow—as mentioned, Johnny is also sure to bring up how fucking far it is to get there.

Johnny’s cynicism about being at the cemetery (only obliging the task on behalf of his mother) persists when he mocks the ceremonial arrangement they brought along to place on the grave, reading the words on it that say, “We still remember.” He balks, turning to Barbra to assert, “I don’t. You know, I don’t even remember what the man looked like.” This blunt admission, which of course scandalizes Barbra, raises the question about how, if someone in your life dies when you’re so young and can’t even remember them (unless you’re Madonna losing her mother at five), is it a matter of genuine sentiment or forced duty to visit their gravesite? Barbra is convinced that it is the latter, devoted to the concept that the one thing that truly separates humans from animals is their ability to mourn the dead, to “show reverence” for those who came before them, those without whom they wouldn’t be here today. Johnny, on the other hand, displays total contempt for the entire frivolous practice of mourning. Of how death has become yet another racket through which opportunists can delight in their hungry capitalistic tendencies.

So it is that Johnny notes to Barbra, after placing down the cross-shaped memento with flowers on it, “Each year we spend good money on these things. We come out here, and the one from last year is gone.” Barbra, too naive and pure to buy into what he’s saying, replies, “Well, the flowers die, And the caretaker or somebody takes them away.” Johnny ripostes, “Yeah, a little spit and polish, he can clean this up, sell it next year. Wonder how many times we bought the same one?”

His general scoffing about this entire “visiting the grave” ordeal is something that, in the past, would have been considered disrespectful, but, more and more, it seems as though Johnny was ahead of his time in branding the entire practice of mourning the dead (and the according existence of cemeteries) as totally bogus. Not just because there are so many other less involved, less invasive (literally) to the living ways to honor the dead, but because the entire “death industry” has so patently become about squeezing as much money as possible out of people. Not about providing them with services and “accommodations” designed to furnish them with the most “emotional support” and consolation possible.

And yet, as Johnny has no trouble pronouncing, there is nothing consoling about this arduous, often creepy process. Barbra might not have agreed from the outset of their visit, but by the time she sees her brother die at the hands of a flesh-eating zombie (knocking Johnny down so that his head hits a gravestone), she’s undoubtedly converted to the camp that believes no good can come of cemeteries (most notably thanks to climate change increasing the flooding of such locations that will turn Mother Nature into an unwitting “grave robber,” digging bodies up arbitrarily).

Considering that, if Johnny and Barbra hadn’t bothered “paying their respects,” they might have both ended up surviving the ephemeral zombie apocalypse that took hold of the nation after, apparently, some radiation fallout (more social commentary on Romero’s part), Johnny was certainly vindicated from the beginning about not wanting to blow his Sunday on a scene like this.

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Genna Rivieccio

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January 7, 2024
Barbra As Ultimate Useless White Woman in Night of the Living Dead

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As far as politically charged early innovators of the horror genre go, Night of the Living Dead takes the cake. Not only the template for the many zombie movies that would come after it, George A. Romero’s debut feature would set the tone for embedding political commentary in such “gory trash.” In fact, although not a zombie movie, it was only six years later that Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would be released. Yet another scathing commentary on the Vietnam War lying just beneath the surface.

With Night of the Living Dead, though, it was about more than just accenting the fact that carnage had become nothing but “titillating” news to report on. It was about the apex that the civil rights movement had reached in the late 1960s, culminating not only in numerous constitutional gains (so they said) for Black Americans, but also the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. This, “coincidentally,” was the year that Night of the Living Dead was released. Amid the most volatile of racial tensions, the Cold War and the U.S. government’s open slaughtering of its citizens whether at home or abroad (where many were sent to fight a losing, inane war). Romero’s decision to cast a Black actor, Duane Jones, in the lead role of a horror film was also considered groundbreaking. But who knew better than the American Black man what it was to live a 24/7 horror movie? More “scandalous” still, Jones as Ben was placed in the hero role among the rest of the all-white cast. This including Judith O’Dea, who played the part of Barbra. A part that would have, in later years, framed her as the final girl (instead, that inaugural trope would be helmed by Sally Hardesty [Elena Sanchez] in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). But in Night of the Living Dead, the trope she instead embodies is one that has endured over many decades: the useless white woman. Not to be confused with the frivolous white woman (e.g., Betty Draper from Mad Men).

The film starts out in such a way as to naturally lead the viewer to believe that this is going to be a movie centered on Barbra, with the first almost fourteen minutes focused on what happens after her brother, Johnny (Russell Streiner), is attacked in the cemetery by the first “ghoul” a.k.a. zombie (played by Bill Hinzman) and Barbra must flee to some kind of safety. This turns out to be an empty (sort of) house not far from the cemetery (itself located in a rural area three hours from Pittsburgh, per Johnny’s complaints about having to travel all the way there just to place a wreath on their dead father’s grave and satisfy their mother [who got to stay home] and her quaint notions of “remembrance”). Upon encountering the mangled, eaten body of the original homeowner, Barbra starts to run outside the house again, only to encounter not only the same zombie following her, but Ben as well, himself seeking refuge from these horrifying “things,” as he calls them. No longer human. And this is an important word to distinguish the “living dead” (a phrase that also describes how the U.S. treats its minorities) from the humans. Because it’s the underlying language white people have used for centuries in their classification of Black people. What James Baldwin once referred to as the “thingification” of Black men and women during slavery. Noting how this is the only race that has ever been viewed as entirely “unhuman,” so as to “absolve” people from any sense of wrongdoing about their treatment. And it is a deeply indoctrinated perception that remains embedded in the white psyche—and, of course, never should have been permitted to happen in the first place. But with that “thingifying” of Black people, it’s no surprise that a police officer’s mere sight of a Black man would prompt him to assume him as a “ghoul,” giving automatic “license” to shoot him. As though he doesn’t have that automatic “license” every day of the week, even when a rash of dead corpses haven’t reanimated into flesh-eating zombies.

Barbra is perhaps able to conceal her own racism by saying not much of anything at all throughout the narrative. Even so, when Ben notices her terrified reaction—as though it might still be lingering because she’s alone with a Black man—after he closes the door behind them, he assures, “It’s all right.” What’s more, Ben is the only person she can rely on in her state. Especially now that she’s witnessed the death of her brother (though is still in denial about him being dead). Because, yes, Barbra is traumatized, entering into a trance as a coping mechanism. But it says something that she is the one who does that over Ben, accustomed, as a Black man, to not only enduring trauma all the time but being expected to grin and bear it. To “power through.” No such expectation has ever been placed on a white girl like Barbra, allowed to indulge and wallow in the shock of her trauma in a way that Ben, quite simply, is not built to.

Thus, he enters into a fight response, proceeding to board up all the windows to the house after realizing there’s no other options for defense. Barbra, meanwhile, is still in her scared little girl trance. Something Ben is expected to accommodate by interrupting his own state of panic to soothe her. To placate her. To, at the very least, try to shake her out of her dark reverie so that he can have the benefit of a partner assisting him in trying to survive. Foolishly, he does try to get Barbra to help out a bit with arming the place against the indefatigably hungry zombies amassing outside, smelling live people the way bears can sniff out food from miles away. As he riffles through kitchen drawers looking for something useful (since Barbra damn sure ain’t), Barbra continues to stare at him blankly, doing absolutely nothing except making the situation worse with her unapologetic uselessness. Finally, Ben gets so irritated by it that he spells out, “Why don’t you see if you can find some wood, some boards, something there by the fireplace, something we can nail this place up?” When she responds by approaching him silently, almost like a zombie herself, Ben snaps and starts to scream, “Goddam—!” stopping himself to try a gentler, more empathetic tack. He tells her, “Look, I know you’re afraid. I’m afraid too. But we have to try to board up the house together. Now, I’m going to board up the windows and the doors, do you understand? We’ll be all right here till someone comes to rescue us. But we’ll have to work together. You’ll have to help me.” Turns out, Ben forgot how much a useless white woman doesn’t have to do anything. Especially help out a Black man.

The rhetoric of Ben repeating his line about needing to work together comes up more than once, and it’s indicative, yet again, of the times. When leading faces of the Black civil rights movement, including King and Baldwin, were imploring white folks to recognize Black people as their fellow brothers and sisters. To, at long last, work with them rather than against them. But that didn’t happen in real life, and it certainly didn’t happen in Night of the Living Dead, where Ben is met with resistance at almost every turn. Particularly when the basement hiders in the house, led by Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), emerge. Indeed, the fact that they heard all of the noise plus Barbra’s screaming upstairs and did nothing except continue to hide is yet another metaphor for white uselessness in a Black person’s world. At the minimum, Tom (Keith Wayne), is willing to be more helpful. And more adhering to Ben’s inherent leadership role. Something Harry obviously doesn’t feel obliged to relinquish, assuming he’s the one who should be listened to as the eldest white man.

Before they enter the scene, however, Ben actually does end up appearing to miss the form of Barbra’s uselessness that kept her mute because, once she starts talking lucidly, she becomes even more of a shitshow. Initially retelling the story of what happened to her brother with an air of calmness, Barbra grows gradually more frantic and, yes, hysterical. This prompts Ben to urge, “Maybe you oughta calm down.” In other words, Oh god, please go back to your fugue state. As her hysteria mounts, she insists they go find her brother, who she also insists is still alive. After enough of this, Ben socks her in the face, a look of satisfaction forming as he seems to view Barbra as the representation for all such previous demanding but useless white women he’s had to deal with in the past.

As for Tom’s girlfriend, Judy (Judith Ridley), she, too, proves to be the worst kind of useless in that she actually wields that uselessness as a means to bring others down. Namely, Tom…as she goes against the plan to stay inside while Tom and Ben run out to fill the car with gas so they can escape. Instead of just letting him go, Judy latches onto him. As a result, she later ends up slowing him down when her jacket gets caught in the truck—enough time for the fire that’s started around it to make the whole car go up in flames. Leaving behind the perfect “barbeque dinner” for the surrounding zombies. Still, Judy did at least watch Harry and Helen’s (Marilyn Eastman) “sick” child, Karen (Kyra Schon), in the basement when they asked her to. That was far more than the likes of “paralyzed” Barbra could ever offer. Shit, even a white girl like Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren) could function through her trauma so long as she wasn’t triggered by the color red. Not Barbra though. She does fuck-all to help Ben, who does the real labor to survive and, in the end, is met with a crueler fate than Barbra being swarmed by zombies and seeing her undead brother among them.

And yet, though it’s sad to say, no amount of Barbra’s assistance likely would have been able to prevent Ben from being met with the average American Black male death: cold-blooded murder by a white person in a position of authority.

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Genna Rivieccio

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December 12, 2023