Over the past ten years, the description "Bollywood horror film" is becoming less rare, especially as Indian film distributors make more attempts to exploit international markets.
There has been a translation barrier to cross in that regard, however, by which I do not mean just the Hindustani language, but a film language and a cinematic mode so intimately tied in to the popular music culture, that it seemed (to foreign eyes) to turn even genres like action and science fiction into sprawling musicals.
This is my second Bollywood horror watching venture, following 2003's Bhoot (which starred Ajay Devgan and Urmila Matondkar). When I first saw Bhoot, a ghost/ exorcism horror film, I supposed that director Ram Gopal Varna was inspired by American horror films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. I had not yet seen Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: the Grudge, but once I had, I saw its influence all over the set design as well as other aspects of the film.
Bhoot, while not the first Bollywood horror film, marked a trend of Indian horror filmmakers joining something like a common culture of international cinematic horror creators, finding modes that would find greater international success.
So now, here comes Go Goa Gone, which has been (aptly) described as a zombie (horror) comedy, although, clearly, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. have seen Shaun of the Dead, which nearly makes this a ZomRomCom.
The movie mostly focuses on a couple of hapless stoner/ cubicle dwellers, Luv (Vir Das) and Hardik (Kunal Khemu), a pairing not unlike that of Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, especially since Luv is the more ambitious of the two, particularly on the romantic front, and he begins the film conflicted about the next step in his ongoing relationship with Priyanka (like Shaun and his commitment problems in SotD. When he makes the decision to "clean up his act" and stop smoking (one presumes tobacco AND pot) and drinking to propose to his girl, it ends badly. When Luv and Hardik's far more responsible and slightly more successful roommate Bunny (Anand Tiwari) gets the opportunity to go to a business seminar at a luxurious resort in the West India state of Goa, Hardik exploits the trip as an opportunity to help his friend Luv get over being rejected and... well, to party.
Once there, Luv encounters Luna (Pooja Gupta), and decides to crash a party (allegedly run by Russian Mafia) on an island off the coast of Goa in an effort to get together with her, dragging his buddies Hardik and Bunny along for the ride (the island party scenario also seems to be a call back to the proto-Bollywood horror, Gumnaan (1966), the movie that the West mainly knows from the song "Jaan Pehechan Ho," which made its' way into 2001's Ghost World, and a beer commercial in 2012).
Of course, this scenario ends up in the film's zombie outbreak, precipitated, in this case, by an experimental combo of drugs disseminated at the party. The guys wake up in different areas of island, eventually finding each other, and hordes of infected/ undead folk with a hunger for the living.
Eventually, they run into a couple of folks they take as Russian Mafia types, one of whom, Boris (Saif Ali Khan) has taken rather nicely to his new role as zombie killer (he first turns up, armed to the teeth, and blowing the hordes away, saying "I kill dead people" (which, somehow, I can only take as a zombie movie take off on M. Night Shyamalan's line from The Sixth Sense).
Poola Gupta's Luna is appealing and modern enough, though more of a throwback to traditional Bollywood heroines (i.e., it's less than clear that she will end up with any of the film's heroes).
It does take a while to get to the zombie killing action (a full 40 minutes out of 111), but the movie is not without the requisite inventiveness needed in the zombie action set pieces (as zombies are dispatched by having flashlights shoved sown their throats, and by shotgun blasts to the head, followed in slow motion), and Das, Khemu and Tiwari have comedic chops that are up to the task; Saif Ali Khan's Boris is something like a Desi/ Russian take on Bruce Campbell's Ash, and fulfills that role very well.
Raj and DK offer characters who, like those in SotD and Zombieland, are very aware of the zombies of (Western) pop culture (though Hardik wonders if his Christian cross would be an effective weapon against the zombs). It may be a bit derivative (i.e., the scene where Luv is convinced that they can get around a zombie horde by blending in), and there are some plot points that seem to go nowhere at all, but the film was a welcome diversion, and a reasonably original entry into the zombie horror genre (and this at a time when we seem overloaded with same on TV and in feature films).
Also welcome were the references to modern office culture (a meme about learning from experience, linked to a poster with Steve Jobs' face on it, gets twisted into a recurring line about survival) and sociopolitical ideas (as when Hardik, less than helpfully, offers that these undead were created by "globalization").
I'm not too sure how this film is playing in the Indian movie-going culture, but horror fans of any nationality, particularly fans of horror comedy, will have plenty to enjoy here.
There has been a translation barrier to cross in that regard, however, by which I do not mean just the Hindustani language, but a film language and a cinematic mode so intimately tied in to the popular music culture, that it seemed (to foreign eyes) to turn even genres like action and science fiction into sprawling musicals.
This is my second Bollywood horror watching venture, following 2003's Bhoot (which starred Ajay Devgan and Urmila Matondkar). When I first saw Bhoot, a ghost/ exorcism horror film, I supposed that director Ram Gopal Varna was inspired by American horror films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. I had not yet seen Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: the Grudge, but once I had, I saw its influence all over the set design as well as other aspects of the film.
Bhoot, while not the first Bollywood horror film, marked a trend of Indian horror filmmakers joining something like a common culture of international cinematic horror creators, finding modes that would find greater international success.
So now, here comes Go Goa Gone, which has been (aptly) described as a zombie (horror) comedy, although, clearly, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. have seen Shaun of the Dead, which nearly makes this a ZomRomCom.
The movie mostly focuses on a couple of hapless stoner/ cubicle dwellers, Luv (Vir Das) and Hardik (Kunal Khemu), a pairing not unlike that of Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, especially since Luv is the more ambitious of the two, particularly on the romantic front, and he begins the film conflicted about the next step in his ongoing relationship with Priyanka (like Shaun and his commitment problems in SotD. When he makes the decision to "clean up his act" and stop smoking (one presumes tobacco AND pot) and drinking to propose to his girl, it ends badly. When Luv and Hardik's far more responsible and slightly more successful roommate Bunny (Anand Tiwari) gets the opportunity to go to a business seminar at a luxurious resort in the West India state of Goa, Hardik exploits the trip as an opportunity to help his friend Luv get over being rejected and... well, to party.
Once there, Luv encounters Luna (Pooja Gupta), and decides to crash a party (allegedly run by Russian Mafia) on an island off the coast of Goa in an effort to get together with her, dragging his buddies Hardik and Bunny along for the ride (the island party scenario also seems to be a call back to the proto-Bollywood horror, Gumnaan (1966), the movie that the West mainly knows from the song "Jaan Pehechan Ho," which made its' way into 2001's Ghost World, and a beer commercial in 2012).
Of course, this scenario ends up in the film's zombie outbreak, precipitated, in this case, by an experimental combo of drugs disseminated at the party. The guys wake up in different areas of island, eventually finding each other, and hordes of infected/ undead folk with a hunger for the living.
Eventually, they run into a couple of folks they take as Russian Mafia types, one of whom, Boris (Saif Ali Khan) has taken rather nicely to his new role as zombie killer (he first turns up, armed to the teeth, and blowing the hordes away, saying "I kill dead people" (which, somehow, I can only take as a zombie movie take off on M. Night Shyamalan's line from The Sixth Sense).
Poola Gupta's Luna is appealing and modern enough, though more of a throwback to traditional Bollywood heroines (i.e., it's less than clear that she will end up with any of the film's heroes).
It does take a while to get to the zombie killing action (a full 40 minutes out of 111), but the movie is not without the requisite inventiveness needed in the zombie action set pieces (as zombies are dispatched by having flashlights shoved sown their throats, and by shotgun blasts to the head, followed in slow motion), and Das, Khemu and Tiwari have comedic chops that are up to the task; Saif Ali Khan's Boris is something like a Desi/ Russian take on Bruce Campbell's Ash, and fulfills that role very well.
Raj and DK offer characters who, like those in SotD and Zombieland, are very aware of the zombies of (Western) pop culture (though Hardik wonders if his Christian cross would be an effective weapon against the zombs). It may be a bit derivative (i.e., the scene where Luv is convinced that they can get around a zombie horde by blending in), and there are some plot points that seem to go nowhere at all, but the film was a welcome diversion, and a reasonably original entry into the zombie horror genre (and this at a time when we seem overloaded with same on TV and in feature films).
Also welcome were the references to modern office culture (a meme about learning from experience, linked to a poster with Steve Jobs' face on it, gets twisted into a recurring line about survival) and sociopolitical ideas (as when Hardik, less than helpfully, offers that these undead were created by "globalization").
I'm not too sure how this film is playing in the Indian movie-going culture, but horror fans of any nationality, particularly fans of horror comedy, will have plenty to enjoy here.