Movie Review: Go Goa Gone
The first time the three lead characters in this film encounter what we can see to be drugged out humans with blood dripping from their melting faces, they wonder aloud who these creatures could be. They can bear sunlight, so they're not vampires. We do spot a vampire in the opening scene of this film when these boys are watching the Telugu version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, "mega-starring" Chiranjeevi. But that's on TV.
The creepy looking, semi-conscious humans walking slowly towards these guys in a jungle now don't have reverse feet, so these boys deduce, they are not chudails (witches) either. They are definitely not regular bhoots, else they could be easily scared away by the sight of the Christian cross. This introduction and similar references before and after suggest that the lead characters here are discovering a new variety of ghosts. So is their Indian movie audience. The directors feel suitably obliged to simultaneously guide them both into this fresh movie genre. The half-dead humans before us are precisely that – un-dead or zinda-murda, in short, zombies, found in "Hollywood", as one of the characters tells us early on.
But strictly speaking, this is not a 'zombie' film, which is essentially a terrifyingly grotesque, wildly scary sub-genre of midnight horror. The zombies as widely recognised in western popular culture now, essentially made their debut in George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (1968). Romero followed that frightening film up with Dawn Of The Dead (1978). This film is a zombie comedy. It is roughly more along the lines of Shaun Of The Dead (2004).
In that sense, it is a spoof of something that needs to be explained first. Does that mean the filmmakers might be getting ahead of themselves? Maybe. But is the film sufficiently funny for a comedy, even if set among zombies? Yes. The performances are breezy, the comic timing is brilliant, the lines are first-rate. So it's all good then.
The humour is mainly directed at the three young humans in the film – their lifestyles and their love-lives. And a Boris Cristo type Russian druglord called Barees (spelt Boris), who shoots off zombies' heads with his buddy the way you would splice fruits in a video-game to de-stress. You may like to get into this duck-hunt as late as possible in a film and exit as early, sometimes it can become a stretch; it does. But Barees has no choice. You don't care about zombies dying either. They were dead to begin with. They live off human flesh and suck on blood to survive. They also spread this disease.
Zombies were originally designed in American films as a dark comment on a consumerist culture that forces people to live no differently from infectious, blood-sucking humans anyway. Over-burdened, tired of politicking office employees who can't tell day from night are often considered zombies for a reason. Though the film makes little of that sub-text, the three friends here are cubicle coolies.
One of them, Bunny, is hard-working (Anand Tiwari, outstanding). Of the other two, the cool cat is called Hardik (Kunal Khemu), which for a name is the worst crime any Hindu parent can commit on their unsuspecting infants. Luv (Vir Das) is supposed to be loveless. But basically both are junkies. They drag the good boy in their group to a rave in an isolated island in Goa. Everybody at the party pops some expensive pills. These guys can't afford it. By morning Goa is pretty much gone. Everyone in the secluded island, except for these buddies and a hot girl, has turned into a hungry zombie.
Almost all these zombies appear to be foreigners, most of them seem white, which isn't odd for a Goa rave. It probably also gives the filmmakers a chance to subtly pay homage to other zombies they've met in Brit or American movies. Better known ones have been spotted in films like Danny Boyle's 27 Days Later, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981), The Evil Dead 2 (1987)… Hard-core fanatics of the genre, unlike me, could offer you far more reccos. Directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK (together credited here as Raj & DK) are best known for Shor In The City (2011), which was a stunning, exhilarating portrait of Bombay. It probably still survives in public memory for a lilting track 'Saibo'. The soundtrack here sounds even better.
Clearly music is not on the lead characters' minds at this point. Only Barees, a desi, Delhi druglord with a thick Russian twang can save the boys and girl with his assortments of knives and bazookas. Saif Ali Khan plays this hilarious part. For a mainstream Bollywood star, this couldn't have been an easy call. It could widen Indian movie choices. Among the uninitiated, Bollywood has been forever known to be some sort of a genre of its own, though I can't remember the last time I saw a man and a woman dance around trees in a Hindi film. You do here. The song is softly romantic. The woman's a zombie. You can both laugh at that moment, and laugh with it. There is a thin line that separates the two. This film somehow always manages to stay on each side. Either way, if you go with the flow, you will end up having fun.
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