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Juan Of The Dead succeeds with imaginative zombie killing set pieces, but also scores large with the satirical bite it aims at Castro and his crumbling regime.
Director Alejandro Brugues’s film enters the zom-com genre, but you wonder how they got permission to film the survivors stealing from zombie tourists and the blood spattered attacks on the walking dead plaguing the grandeur of Havana harbourside.
There is an amazing underwater walking dead scene as the survivors trying to flee on makeshift rafts and are pulled under by the more energetic zombies.
Throughout the film we are reminded that the Cuban Government blame the impending social disaster and zombie apocalypse on a group of American funded dissidents.
Even as the streets erupt in chaos, TV news bulletins continue to broadcast and urge the people to remain calm and maintain that the dissidents have been beaten and ‘the revolution is invincible’.
Adding a new twist to the Slacker genre, we see Juan who turns good under the pressure of a social meltdown and insists he will survive any disaster because he will ‘always catch a break.’
Chief slacker Juan takes charge over his band of misfits and decides to set up a business – Juan of the Dead, ‘we kill your loved ones.’
The weeks and months roll on and they begin to realise the extent of the zombie plague. At one point they try to escape a horde of zombies in a car with no-one getting in the driving seat before Juan finds it won’t start and curses the Russians who brought the useless Ladas to the island.
But ultimately, even in the face of the impossible, it is their dogged determination to survive the Communist struggle and love of the Cuban way of life which helps them survive.
Juan Of The Dead was screened on Picturehouse at FACT, check out this week’s FACT Liverpool cinema times: http://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on
Official Juan Of The Dead site http://www.juanofthedeadmovie.com/lang/en/