Crunched skulls, blood splatters and dirty jokes abound in Cuba’s first ever zom-com.

Borrowingly heavily from its predecessor – and obvious inspiration – Shaun of the Dead, director Alejandro Brugués’ Juan of the Dead departs from the format by bearing a surprisingly political message at its heart.

Alexis Díaz de Villegas plays the titular Juan, a middle-aged slacker who spends his days fishing off a homemade raft and drinking rum with best pal – and semi-professional sex pest – Lazaro (Jorge Molina). Rejected by his sensible daughter Camila, Juan’s life seems largely devoid of purpose. That is until the citizens of his home city Havana start turning into zombies.

Far from fleeing, the pragmatic Juan senses an opportunity to make money. Along with Lazaro, Juan sets up an agency from the rooftop of his building, offering services to those in need: for a price, he will kill your zombified loved ones. Business booms but before long it becomes apparent that Juan and his crew need to get out of the city before it’s too late for them as well.

As a zom-com Juan of the Dead doesn’t have a great deal to bring to the table that you won’t have seen elsewhere. All the tropes – along with countless corpse brains – get hit: inventive weapons, allies becoming infected and having to be dispatched, acts of surprising, poignant heroism. It’s still engaging – largely due to the performances – but smacks of a genre that, after so long in the limelight, is smelling less than fresh.

Luckily Brugués manages to inject nice little comedic flourishes of his own. Perhaps the funniest scene comes early on, where Juan and Lazaro encounter a zombie and – stumped as to what the creature could be – attempt to kill it in a variety of ways: harpoon, garlic, stake through the heart, cross. It’s a nice little twist that nobody seems to clock that what’s going on around them is a zombie apocalypse, a theme so seemingly familiar in modern culture.

The sharpest, freshest humour in this film, though, derives from Brugués’ satirical approach to his apparently brainless subject matter. Throughout the entire film, the Cuban news networks refuse to declare that the zombie epidemic is anything other than “dissidents” with ties to the US. Another running joke is that the corpsified residents of Havana, shuffling dead-eyed through the streets, look no different than they always have done.

Behind the filthy jokes and litres of fake blood lies a caustic wit, an edginess that asks the rest of the world to look to Cuba and take it seriously. Even the characters, out of the loop politically and socially, are disenchanted with a government that, after 52 years of rule, has become irrelevant and has literally turned its citizens into zombies.

Juan of the Dead might not be the greatest zombie movie of all time, but its political edge makes Brugués stand out as one to watch.

Released in UK cinemas on Firday 4th May 2012 by Metrodome Distribution.

Are you looking forward to Juan of the Dead? Let us know below…