Two office-bound slackers entice their workaholic friend to a resort, where they party hard, meet some beautiful women, stumble upon seedy underworld types before, inevitably, trying to fight off the zombie apocalypse. Sound familiar?
What makes Go Goa Gone different is the Bollywood production values. This is the first mainstream Indian Zombie film and it’s a daring edgy one at that (with an Indian A certificate for gore, drug use and foul language). Interestingly, the directors Krishna D.K. and Raj Nidimoru along with fellow writers Kunal Khemu, Sita Menon and Raja Sen have chosen to adapt some romantic comedy devices to set the film, or as the trailer puts it, to create a ZomCom! So, in spirit, Go Goa Gone is more like Shaun of the Dead than World War Z.
Kunal Khemu and Vir Das play Hardik and Luv, the two heavy drinking, pot smoking slackers who convince their hard working pal Bunny (Anand Tiwari) to let them freeload on his business trip to Goa. Once there Luv chances to meet the beautiful Luna (former Miss Universe contestant turned actress Puja Gupta). Luna invites them to a rave party off the coast and soon the lads find exactly what they came to Goa for.
The morning after the rave, things get ugly as zombies start to appear around the island (for Zombie geeks, these are the slow-moving, feet dragging type of zombies). It soon becomes clear the three friends, together with Luna are in trouble. Soon they meet Boris, a “Russian” underworld type we had spied earlier at the party. Boris, played by Bollywood superstar Saif Ali Khan, is a great satirical pastiche of horror/action anchor roles.
The fact that Bollywood has not attempted a full zombie film before is played for laughs in Go Goa Gone, with the characters not really sure how to kill the zombies. Do they hold a cross in front of them or draw them into the daylight? This kind of “meta” humour is unusual in Bollywood comedies and gives a lot of the jokes a very sharp and contemporary feel. In fact, this is one of the funniest Indian films I have seen in some time!
Unlike a typical Bollywood production, Go Goa Gone is short, coming in at only 108 minutes. In a way this is a blessing, since the plot is quite formulaic and contains few real surprises. Go Goa Gone is unlikely to have zombie film fans rewriting their top ten lists. But, this is a different style of zombie film, with a good sense of humour and marks something of a daring departure for Bollywood; for those reasons, Go Goa Gone is well worth checking out.
