Movies
Juan of the Dead
“ ‘Juan of the Dead’ is a fun little zombie film…in a landscape where everyone and their mother are making zombie films, [it] definitely stands out as a unique little take on an often overplayed sub-genre.“
Director Alejando Brugues had a specific vision for his Cuba-based zombie flick Juan of the Dead, one that culls together over fifty years of Cuban history into a tight little story about pride in one’s own country and the increasing tensions with the United States. Using zombies as a metaphor for both the internal and external struggle Cubans deal with on a daily basis, Brugues manages to construct a fun yet flawed little zombie flick, one that pays homage to zombie films we all know and love.
Living in the slums of Cuba, Juan and Lazaro are small time crooks spending their days fishing, drinking, and hanging out on the rooftop of their apartment building. Despite his comfortable, albeit simple, life, Juan longs to reconnect with his daughter, who seeks to move to Miami to be with her mother and leave behind her squalid life in Havana. But now Juan and Lazaro have a bigger problem: zombies have taken to the streets and are running amok. Not one to let a money-making opportunity slip by, Juan and Lazaro establish themselves as the city’s only zombie dispatchers, charging a hefty fee to dispose of the living dead in the homes of Cuba’s denizens.
Juan of the Dead is incredibly straightforward in its approach, though it manages to toss in enough humor and subtext to make it stand out as something moderately unique. Zombies are referred to at various points as revolutionaries and dissidents, and several times a talking head on the television make explicit references to the possibility that the zombie invasion is American made. It’s pretty heavy handed at times, though this does little to detract from much of the humor.
Sadly, some of the humor gets lost in translation. Words appear on the screen before they’re spoken, often ruining a joke that rests squarely on the timing of its delivery; other times the humor just doesn’t come across in text well enough for non-Spanish speakers, prompting nothing more than a slight chuckle as opposed to gut-busting laughter. When it does work, much of the humor comes from its strong characters. Alexis Diaz de Villegas and Jorge Molina play off each others distinct personalities perfectly; one is serious and determined, the other aimless and accident-prone (though the accidents don’t always befall him). This of course calls to mind the relationship between Shaun and Ed from the similarly titled Shaun of the Dead, and I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to call Juan and Lazaro spiritual successors to the two.
The characters, however, are also incredibly despicable people. Their role as small time thieves to sustain themselves in the slums of Cuba notwithstanding, they seem to have no problem accidentally murdering people and simply not caring. Lazaro’s inability to accurately work a small crossbow provides much of the deadpan humor in the film, but it also allows their true character to shine. It’s kill or be killed during the zombie uprising in Cuba, even when the enemy in your sights isn’t one.
Given its low budget, the CGI comes across has blatantly obvious and very hokey, though the frenetic human vs. zombie brawls are entertaining enough to distract you from it. Weapons of choice are nunchucks, an old wooden boat oar (reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead, despite what the director claimed), a baseball and bat, and the aforementioned crossbow. The deaths are fun, inventive and downright hilarious at times.
Juan of the Dead is a fun little zombie film, yet one with enough flaws to be heavily divisive. Not everyone will love it – maybe it’s not subtle enough, or maybe the CGI just doesn’t do it for you, but in a landscape where everyone and their mother are making zombie films, Juan of the Dead definitely stands out as a unique little take on an often overplayed sub-genre.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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