“Juan de los muertos is a zombie comedy, something that has gained popularity in these last years because horror and comedy mix very well thanks to something they have in common: subtext. Consider that Cuba is a country that has been preparing itself to confront the US, but what if we had to confront zombies?” writer/director Alejandro Brugués (Personal Belongings) says about his second opus, which hits a fair number of right notes in some scenes, and yet it ultimately misses on the chance of being memorable as a whole. And not because of a lack of trying.
The story goes like this: Juan (Alexis Díaz de Villegas) is your average lazybones, now trying hard to reconnect with his fine-looking daughter who’s visiting Havana, and will soon meet her mother in Miami, where they both live. Lázaro (Jorge Molina) is Juan’s best pal, and he too is trying to bond with his own son. On a given morning, Juan and Lázaro wake up and find out there has been a zombie outbreak all across Cuba. While hundreds are being killed, the media and the government claim that the zombies are, in fact, dissidents in rebellion against the government.
But in the current scenario, Juan and Lázaro see a great business opportunity: the killing and disposing of zombies. For a fee, they guarantee they’ll kill your recently deceased loved ones for you. They recruit three more slayers and off they go to make some money.
Being the first Cuban zombie movie ever made, Juan de los muertos (Juan of the Dead) deserves some credit for some things it gets right: there’s sufficient good gore in most confrontations (and it goes in crescendo, as it starts kind of mild), there’s also more than a handful of well-executed action scenes, and while the visual effects are not really impressive, they are decent enough to sustain verisimilitude.
Some of the comic episodes are indeed funny, but many others just go for easy laughs. Too bad the plot is perhaps too episodic and zigzagging. On the plus side, this version of zombie-infected Havana does look credible enough. Some scenes go for a grotesque effect, and to a certain extent, they succeed.
But when it comes to the subtext writer/director Alejandro Brugués refers to, let’s just say that it’s too obvious and one-dimensional — the “insights” into Cuba’s political situation are plainly dumb. They’re meant to be critical, but they fall into commonplace. You know: Cuba is a country where everything is worn out, medication is outdated, elevators and phones don’t work, and so forth. As though Cuba were just that and nothing but. In this movie, you either have Cubans who amusingly complain non-stop and then leave, or proud and Samaritan ones who stay and risk their lives as they fight hordes of zombies non-stop.
P.S.
Production notes
Juan de los muertos (Cuba-Spain, 2011). Written and directed by Alejandro Brugués. With Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina, Andros Perugorría, Andrea Duro, Jazz Vilá. Cinematography: Carles Gusi. Editing: Mercedes Cantero. Running time: 91 minutes.
