Juan of the Dead (2012)

Powerful

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

In this terror/comedy picture there is action , tongue-in-cheek , irony , creepy atmosphere as well as gore , guts and blood . 50 years after the Cuban Revolution, a new Revolution is about to begin , then a bunch of slackers take on an army of zombies . Juan (Alexis Díaz de Villegas) is a botcher vagrant as well as womanizer attempting to reconnect with his daughter (Andrea Duro) , who schemes to rejoin her mummy in Miami . Meanwhile , Lazaro (Jorge Molina) , Juan's friend , is wishing to connect with his own son . They start to notice that citizens are "going crazy" , attacking locals and eating their flesh , and the recently deceased are going back to life . Juan tries to take of advantage of terror created by Zombies , as starts a business to profit off of killing the zombies . Juan forms a misfit squad , as they confront several Zombies starving of human meat and may soon find their own lives at risk .Funny and refreshing Cuban/Spanish picture including lots of blood and gore . It's a fun and amusing Zombie movie filled with action , thrills , chills , humor and Zombie attacks . It results to be an outstanding horror/comedy movie , it's realized in fast moving and neither boring , nor tiring , but entertaining . From start to finish the action pace is nonstop , including a lot of fights , attacks and twisted situations . Spectacular frames when takes place a creepy head decapitating scene , it was not filmed in Revolution Square as filming there was impossible, so, the Square was digitally added after the sequence had been shot . There some brief critiques to Cuban government , as the media claim that the zombies are dissidents revolting against the government . It was submitted a certain censorship , as freedom of expression remains under siege in Cuba despite the reopening of diplomatic relations . Juan De Los Muertos was made with the support of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficas - Icaic, Canal Sur, Televisión Española and the collaboration of Junta de Andalucía, Ibermedia, Cinergia and Universidad De Guadalajara . Thrilling and atmospheric soundtrack by Julio De La Rosa , a notorious composer who has composed successes such as ¨Isla Minima¨ , ¨Primos¨ , ¨Grupo 7¨ , ¨Siete Virgenes¨ and ¨Carne De Neon . ¨Appropriate cinematography by Carlos Gusi -¨Torrente¨ , ¨Box 507¨ , ¨El Niño¨, ¨Take my eyes¨ , ¨Sexykiller¨ , ¨Cell 211¨ - who photographs splendidly the colorful exteriors from La Habana . The motion picture was compellingly directed by Alejandro Bruges and it achieved Goya Award to best Iberoamerican film . Alejandro is a writer and director, known for 2011 Fabula , 2006 Personal Belongings , 2005 Frutas en el café, 2005 Bailando Chachacha , 2004 Tres Veces Dos , 2000 Candela and he has been hired by Hollywood where directed The ABCs of Death 2 and is set to direct the third episode of season two of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn : The Series .

It is rare that a film combines, satire, parody, thrills, scary zombies, and deadpan humor. Such is the film Juan of the Dead.Plot is simple. Zombies try to take over Cuba. But the government says they are "dissidents" created by the Americans to undermine Cuba. In a very clever film, the director, Alejandro Bruques, takes us on a fantasy ride of zombie threats and humor with many political points along the way.Several island residents form a motley crew of a trans gurl, a muscle bound dude, a hot babe and a guy named "California", is just the beginning of zombie mayhem.They even open a business, "we kill your loved one" to earn a few extra bucks off the zombies...Cuban style.The budget is not mentioned in the film overview, but I bet they really made a very low budge stretch quite a bit. From the beginning to end credits it is a delight. Every film student should see this movie to see what you can do with imagination and not the fancy cameras profiled in American media.Their first kill has a harpoon go through a zombie to kill an old lady standing right behind the zombie. Ooops! A wooden oar weapon is so decrepit that we would never use it as an oar. There is also the famous car/boat that many refuges use to flee Cuba used to escape the onslaught of zombies. In one scene, an attack by numerous zombies is thwarted by a single harpoon and a "rally around the flag pole". Heh, heh.A slow motion arrow is an tick toward Matrix.The film introduces a stereo type American and since the crew does not speak English, Juan introduces himself by saying "My name is Juan". Get it. It beginning Spanish class the first thing you learn is "Yo me llamo Juan". Very funny.They spoof Bruce Lee with a freeze frame at the end. Ending credits are terrific. There are subtitles so get ready and just read them.The ending credits are really inventive as is the entire film. I have never seen it in a bargain bin, so I will try and make my own copy from a TV showing. I recommend this highly as a very funny, highly inventive, well shot film about the zombie Apocalypse.

No major spoilers here. It's a friggin' zombie film!This refreshing Cuban-Spanish zombie comedy will definitely annoy every McDonalds-munching day-dreaming couch-potato Western-Marxist hypocrite, for it does not glorify the mankind-loathing decadence of rabid Communism or its psychopathic coffee-mug iconic perpetrators – as 95% of all movies with a political message do. In fact, JOTD is an obvious bashing of Castro's Cuba and its 60 year-long downward spiral, marked by poverty, misery and brainwashing. Speaking of which, brainwashed liberals/avatards and nerdy left-wing film-students, so spoiled by decades of watching only their political views being represented in movies, will be quite surprised to know that the image of Che Guevara – for once – isn't used on the big-screen to symbolize freedom.Havana is in the midst of a zombapocalypse, and the tyrannical regime is incompetent to deal with it. What they are marginally successful in is launching a media campaign whose objective is to portray and label the zombies as "imperialist dissidents", part of a US ploy to destroy the country. Hence the word "zombie" is used only once, by the Bible-hugging foreigner; instead, the living dead are referred to jokingly by the survivors as "dissidents". "Forget America, this time we have a real enemy."Unlike what you'd normally expect from a horror comedy, nearly all of the funny moments are dialog-related. As a result, JOTD has most of its highlights in the first half-hour, much of which isn't dominated by zombies. The second half-hour sees a quality-drop of sorts, since that is when most of the cartoon violence takes place; after all, there are only so many ways in which you can kill a zombie, and the majority of those we've already seen in many other such movies. Although, to be fair, JOTD does provide moments of zombie-slashing/physical originality as well, with some rather fun gore, and can outshine nearly every zombie comedy with ease. The last half-hour is a marked improvement over the middle, with a lot more dialog again, hence more of those wonderful quips by the two male leads.The characters, even though just part of a silly zombie flick, appear more real than most characters in your typical American dramas. They are not morally perfect; in fact, they have many flaws, and aside from Juan's daughter all of them are a bit dodgy, to put it mildly. This too is a refreshing approach, steering well from the American/British clichés of the morally squeaky-clean (hence absurd/unreal) hero.Speaking of what's real and what isn't, JOTD has another essential thing going for it: it does NOT look like a modern Western horror film at all. What I mean by this is that JOTD doesn't have that computer-software-ruined mono-colour filtered/plastic downbeat/depressing look that we've been cursed with in the past decade or so when it comes to American, British and French horror films. (Kudos to the rare exceptions.) JOTD looks very refreshingly real, the colours are stark, vivid, vibrant, and most importantly - they are all there: it's not just green or blue or yellow. That way, the movie serves as a nostalgic reminder of what Western horror films (more-or-less) used to look like once upon a time back in the 70s and early 80s, at a time when a movie's look wasn't decided on some idiot's laptop, but by the quality of the cinematographer and the director.If anyone is worried that a Cuban movie might be a little lacking in the special-effects department, have no fear: the effects are great, as are the distant shots of Havana burning.The fact that the female cast is both beautiful and sexy (Andrea Duro and Blanca Rosa Blanco) is just the icing on the cake.Forget "Shaun of the Dead", this is the one to watch.

While most of the lesser efforts in the "zombie genre" tend to eschew the political savvy the genre's de facto creator George Romero himself often employs (relying instead on simply trying to spook or to nauseate their viewers), JUAN OF THE DEAD does it all- and does it well. Juan is just one of what's come to be known in this country as "the one percent"- the people at the very bottom of the financial and political ladder(s); "the Juan percent," if you will, who are often forced to eke out marginal if not outright illegal livings. Employing Romero's method of imparting information via news reports, JUAN OF THE DEAD makes it hysterically if somewhat subtly clear that this whole zombiegeddon thing is an American government mistake gone global (which could prove over-the-top hilarious, given the current state of GOP- George Orwell Propaganda- TV in this country, if someone were to do an even more "biting" satire along the lines of the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). "We OWN this country," a doddering old movie director proudly proclaimed at a political circle jerk a little more than a week ago. Maybe- but be warned: it could very well come back to bite you in the ***.