Juan of the Dead

On a sunlit Havana that suddenly hallows the dead, a plague of zombies roams the streets while official channels insist the unrest is the handiwork of foreign dissidents. Juan, a quick-witted everyman, finds that he can stop the undead by targeting their brains and soon realizes there’s a business opening in the chaos. With a mix of grit and gallows humor, he teams up with friends and drifters as they move through city blocks choked with the living and the dead, bargaining, bickering, and improvising to survive. The film roasts sensationalist media and the ridiculousness of turning fear into a service, all while keeping the pace brisk and the jokes handy.

Directed by Alejandro Brugués, Juan of the Dead is an original Cuban horror comedy released in 2011. It features Alexis Diaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina, Andros Perugorría, Andrea Duro, and Jazz Vilá, produced with a $3 million budget.

Box office performance was modest, with a worldwide gross of $324,834, reflecting a limited release outside Cuba. It found its core audience in film festivals and among genre fans rather than mass market theaters.

Often discussed as a milestone for Cuban genre cinema, it helped bring Havana onto the international zombie map and sparked conversations about how genre could grow on the island. Its offbeat slogan "We kill your loved ones" became part of the dialogue around how fear is packaged for profit.

Critics described the film as a brisk, irreverent mix of zombie horror and social satire, with a punchy sense of humor. Thematically it uses crisis exploitation, media manipulation, and survival ethics to examine fear, greed, and community in a collapsing city.