Queer (Film): Plot, Cast, Reviews & Where to Watch

Daniel Craig shed the cool composure that defined his James Bond years to play William Lee, a Burroughs alter ego chasing a younger man across 1950s Mexico City. The risk paid off: Craig earned some of the best notices of his career in Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Burroughs’ 1985 novella.

Lead Actor: Daniel Craig as William Lee ·
Co-Star: Drew Starkey as Eugene Allerton ·
Setting: 1950s Mexico City and Ecuador ·
Release Year: 2024 ·
Distributor: A24

These verified facts provide a quick reference for the film’s core details.

Does Drew Starkey Wear a Prosthetic in Queer?

Early online speculation zeroed in on Drew Starkey’s strikingly thin frame as Eugene Allerton. Some viewers assumed heavy prosthetics must be involved. They were wrong.

Physical preparation details

Drew Starkey prepared for the role through actual physical transformation rather than makeup. He lost weight to embody Allerton’s gaunt, weathered appearance. This wasn’t a quick shedding of pounds for a role—it appears connected to a longer preparation period, giving his performance a lived-in quality that prosthetics could never replicate.

Guadagnino has a track record of preferring authentic transformation over artificial enhancement. His direction on previous films like Call Me By Your Name consistently emphasized genuine physical and emotional preparation from actors. Working on Queer, he applied the same philosophy, allowing Starkey the space to build his character from the outside in.

Is Queer Worth Watching?

The film holds a 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 242 critics, with an average score of 7.1 out of 10 (Wikipedia). Metacritic’s weighted average sits at 72 out of 100 based on 50 reviews, indicating generally favorable reception (Wikipedia). The numbers tell a story, but so do the words behind them.

Rotten Tomatoes reception

The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus called the film “a phantasmagorical distillation of William S. Burroughs’ preoccupations that’s by turns meandering and vital” (Wikipedia). That word “meandering” surfaces repeatedly—some reviewers found the lack of conventional structure frustrating, while others embraced it as part of the film’s dreamlike quality.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described Craig’s performance as “really funny, open, generous,” while noting he “upstages Starkey” in nearly every scene (Wikipedia). Awards Watch gave the film a grade of B+, praising both leads: Craig as “perfect” and Starkey as “revelatory” (Awards Watch). PopMatters included Queer on their list of the year’s best films (Wikipedia).

Viewer discussions

Beyond critical circles, audience reactions online reveal a film that divides as often as it connects. Reddit threads show appreciation for the film’s riskier choices, with viewers praising its refusal to soften the source material’s harder edges. Others bounced off the deliberate pacing and nonlinear storytelling. The strongest praise consistently points to Craig’s performance as the film’s anchor.

What Is the Point of the Film Queer?

Beneath the period setting and the chemistry between leads lies a meditation on desire, self-destruction, and the impossibility of change. William Lee chases Eugene Allerton across Mexico City, into bars, through late-night confessions—and eventually into the Ecuadorian Amazon in search of a magical hallucinogenic.

Core themes

The film’s structure mirrors the Burroughs novella it adapts: episodic, reflective, less concerned with plot than with the texture of obsession. Lee is a man who has tried to outrun his own nature through geography, substances, and younger bodies. Allerton represents something he can never quite possess.

The Amazonian jungle sequence serves as the film’s turning point—not a moment of revelation, but of confirmation. Lee seeks transformation through a Ayahuasca-like brew; what he gets is the realization that his compulsive patterns travel with him wherever he goes. Desire doesn’t dissolve at a certain altitude.

Symbolic elements

The centipede motif appears throughout the novella and carries into the film. In Burroughs’ work, it often represents decay, entropic change, or the body’s betrayal. Guadagnino incorporates the creature in ways that suggest Lee’s fragmented sense of self—but whether audiences read it as haunting or simply strange depends on their relationship to the source material.

The film’s ending leaves Lee fundamentally unchanged. The Ayahuasca quest yields nothing transcendent. Allerton walks away. Lee stays alone, as he has always been, as he perhaps always will be. Guadagnino’s choice to give the story an ending Burroughs never wrote suggests a kind of compassion—the director finishes what the author couldn’t, offering a physical manifestation of the grief that drove Burroughs throughout his life.

What Happened to Allerton in Queer?

Eugene Allerton functions as the film’s mysterious center. Based on Adelbert Lewis Marker—Burroughs’ real-life lover and the man who inspired the original novella—Allerton arrives in Mexico City as a younger American expat who catches Lee’s eye immediately (Awards Watch).

Plot summary with spoilers

Lee seduces Allerton, but the film isn’t really about seduction—it’s about pursuit. Lee keeps circling back, keeps trying to pin down this younger man who resists easy classification. Their relationship develops through hazy nights, philosophical debates, and Lee’s increasingly desperate attempts to hold onto something that was never really his.

The Amazonian journey represents Lee’s final play. He convinces Allerton to accompany him into the jungle to find and consume a magical substance that might change everything. The trip happens. The substance is consumed. Nothing changes for Lee. Allerton, at the end, simply leaves.

Relationship dynamics

The age gap between Craig’s Lee and Starkey’s Allerton is part of the point—the film doesn’t romanticize the dynamic so much as examine it. Lee has money, experience, and desperation; Allerton has youth and an enigmatic detachment that Lee misreads as vulnerability. Their power dynamic shifts throughout, but never settles into anything stable.

Guadagnino handles the physical intimacy between the leads with the same sensual attention he brought to Call Me By Your Name, though the emotional registers differ. Where that film centered on awakening, Queer is about loss—anticipatory, ongoing, and final.

Why Did Daniel Craig Do Queer?

Daniel Craig spent years as James Bond—a role that demanded physical perfection, cool composure, and a certain distance. In Queer, he plays a man who falls apart. The transformation in his performance is striking, and it raises a natural question: why take this on?

Actor motivations

In interviews surrounding the film’s release, Craig spoke about the role in terms that suggested deep personal investment. He described William Lee as a character he wouldn’t have been right for at an earlier point in his career. The implication: certain roles require a particular moment in life, a specific accumulation of experience and willingness to be uncomfortable.

Craig has talked openly about his approach to portraying same-sex attraction in the film, noting that the work should come from emotional truth rather than technical performance. His comments positioned the role as a craft challenge rather than a political statement—which makes sense given the film’s focus on individual psychology over identity politics.

Straight actors playing gay roles

The conversation about straight actors portraying LGBTQ+ characters is ongoing in the industry. Queer arrived at a moment when that conversation has become more nuanced—audiences and critics increasingly expect authentic casting, but also recognize that performance is performance. Craig’s involvement didn’t generate the controversy that similar casting choices sometimes provoke, likely because the critical response to the work itself was strong.

The film’s reception suggests that audiences are capable of separating casting decisions from finished performance. Craig’s William Lee works on screen; that’s the argument that ultimately matters to most viewers.

The pattern here—artistically ambitious work rewarded with divided audiences—mirrors the film’s own themes of pursuit without resolution.

A phantasmagorical distillation of William S. Burroughs’ preoccupations that’s by turns meandering and vital, Queer marks one of Daniel Craig’s most sterling performances yet.

— Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus (Wikipedia)

Really funny, open, generous performance—perhaps the only disadvantage is that he upstages Starkey.

— Peter Bradshaw, film critic, The Guardian (Wikipedia)

Guadagnino finishes the story in a way that Burroughs never could, and this movie provides a physical manifestation of the pain Burroughs was consistently and inescapably attempting to combat throughout his life.

— TIFF 2024 reviewer (Wikipedia)

Queer is not a film for every audience—and that’s precisely what makes it worth something. Luca Guadagnino has crafted a work that refuses to soften Burroughs’ harder edges, trusting audiences to meet the film on its own terms. For viewers interested in unconventional love stories, literary adaptations, or simply in seeing what Daniel Craig can do when he sheds a franchise skin entirely, the answer is: quite a lot.

The film’s unconventional structure and deliberate pacing mean it rewards patience. Those who want their stories neat and resolved may bounce off it. Those open to moody, elliptical character studies will find something that lingers. Guadagnino chose to finish Burroughs’ story in a way the author never could—and in doing so, gave Craig the role of his career.

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Daniel Craig embodies William Lee alongside Drew Starkey, with the Queer cast breakdown offering deeper insights into their portrayals and the ensemble.

Frequently asked questions