Review of Juan of the Dead (2011) by Rob C — 21 Oct 2013

Juan (Alexis Diaz de Villegas) is a forty-year old Cuban slacker who is shunned by his daughter because of his haphazard lifestyle. He spends the majority of his time with his good friend Lazaro (Jorge Molina) and their rag-tag group consisting of Lazaro's son, a cross dresser and his/her bodybuilding pal that faints at the sight of blood. Their choice of employment: robbing from their fellow people and the tourists that come to their country. That all comes to a halt when they notice people around them acting crazy (well differently than before), then suddenly attacking and eating each other. Soon after, Juan and company use that opportunity to make a few extra dollars in offering their "dissident" extermination services to the people around their city.

Juan of the Dead is basically Shaun of the Dead, but in Cuba. While Shaun... might surpass this film on how they deliver it's zombies, Juan of the Dead is an altogether funnier film. The mannerisms of Villegas and Molina, while they spout off one-liners and shrug off random bits when they're killing zombies, has to be the best part of the entire film. They play off their lines smoothly, co-signing each others dialogue on every corner. Social commentary, like the zombies, run rampant, but director Alejandro Brugués decided to express it in a rather silly way, having the film concentrate mostly on its characters. Halfway through the film, you forget about the horror and wonder what the characters will do or say next. Basically I wondered what other concoction they were going to cook up next on how they were going to off the zombies. However, as with most foreign films, this one is in subtitles, but not in a intruding way. It blends really well with the film and after the first twenty minutes you start to not notice it all. I don't hear much about Cuban horror, let alone a zombie film from this country, but if Juan of the Dead is what's in store for us, I'm excited to see new films surface from them in the near future.