When I first watched this zombie horror-comedy when it released in 2013, I felt like it didn’t have enough bite. I wanted it to do more with some of what it started to lay out, namely the smart and funny premise that the party scene in Goa (a small state on India’s western coast, generally most known in the west for affordable beach holidays and drugs) turns its guests into zombies. It seemed like what some patriotic filmmakers of past generations would have done, warning India about invasive foreigners who pollute everyone with destructive influence, turning themselves and Indians alike into the walking dead.

For those of you who know Hindi cinema, isn’t that basically an idea that heavy-handed Manoj Kumar would love? But by the 2010s, and in the hands of hip young directors-writers Raj and D. K. (the professional moniker of the team of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K), I expected something more nuanced and cynical. 

The story is simple: three 20-something roommates, one of them far too sweet and responsible (Bunny) to have to put up with the stoned shenanigans and teasing of the other two (Luv and Hardik), go on a trip to Goa, where a mysterious woman invites them to a party on an island, where things quickly go very, very wrong and our heroes have to fight for their lives. Except for the addition of the Russian mafia, headlined by the Hindi-speaking weapon-toting Boris, this does sound a little like And Then There Were None—and there are far worse setups for an adventure. 

I rewatched the film recently and saw it entirely differently, maybe because so many much more nightmarish things have happened in the decade since its release. Brainless munching your neighbors is a completely reasonable response to world events and smart commentary on rising fascism and mob mentality in India (and elsewhere) and are much easier to defeat than these very real problems. (I won’t give away the film’s method of curing zombie-ism but it too has geopolitical implications.) What I felt were underdeveloped characters and half-done contexts of jobs and apartments and love interests now feel like shorthand that the makers trust the audience to fill in, using them in an economic prelude to the main event of zombie chases and mysteries. The first zombie appears at 32 minutes into the 105-minute total run, and while I remain convinced that the boys’ backstory doesn’t really matter, I wasn’t annoyed to spend this time in setup showing just how worried about his small life Bunny is and how generally feckless Luv and Hardik are. All of these traits get surmounted as they fight for their lives, and it was good to see them grow against their former selves. The film ends with our heroes still in Goa, and I was confident that once they go home they’d be at least a little improved by their adventures: Bunny probably more confident and the other two probably a little more thoughtful of the other people in their lives. (A sequel has been discussed for years but has yet to materialize.) 

Go Goa Gone is one of the more memorable entries in a category that Hindi cinema has visited off and on over the years: basically decent but very immature men in a city eventually confront something that makes them grow up socially, financially, and/or emotionally. It’s not the only film of this type to compare a life of low-level corporate jobs, filthy apartments, heartless women, and pot with a brain-dead, meaningless existence, but it’s the only one to do it by interjecting literal zombies and crunchy, splattering violence. It also has fun inverting Bollywood tropes; its totally unique setting renders the jokes new. Romantic romps around trees, pausing climatic action to have a quick word with the gods, and a meet-cute that was unraveled by the realization that in the social media age we all have enough passing, basically anonymous, low-grade familiarity with one another that there is no such such thing as meet-cutes anymore.

[Mild spoiler for the rest of the paragraph.] I also really appreciated that Luna, one of the few women in the film and Luv’s love interest, shows the very good sense to have no romantic interest in anyone in the story; all of the options are man-children or criminals, and she tries to get away from them and all other forms of trouble. It’s as though she knows what kind of movie she’s in and zombies are plenty to be getting on with. [End spoiler.]

The most fun part of Go Goa Gone to me now is how it relates to, and comments on, an important entry in the filmography of one of its stars. Boris is played by Saif Ali Khan (who also co-produced), and he was also one of the stars of Dil Chahta Hai in 2001. For those unfamiliar, this was a wildly popular and important project, and it too begins with three men friends going on a road trip to Goa as a last blast of fun after university before they have to assume the responsibilities of the rest of their lives. In that one, Saif’s role is a sunny-natured scion of respectable wealth and ambition; in this one, he’s part of an international crime syndicate. We eventually discover that not only is Boris just a Fauxviet, a regular Hindi-speaker from Delhi who dyed his hair blonde and put on an accent, but it’s his drugs that unleashed the horror on the island.

I can’t think of another film that has a big star play a character who pretends not to be Indian and who is responsible for the major threat to the moral order. The promise of the future has utterly failed. I might not have been ready to understand that in 2013, but in 2023, it’s inescapable

Go Goa Gone is available with English subtitles for rent on Youtube. 

Last year also gave us Zombivli, Marathi-language zombie horror-comedy with some understated social commentary. It’s hard to find with subtitles, but here’s the trailer. 

And if you’re wondering if there is an Indian take on “Thriller,” rest assured there certainly is (and now that I’ve reminded you, you might vaguely remember Buffalax’s viral video version from the mid 2000s). Luv and Hardik watch “Golimaar” from the 1985 Telugu film Donga at the beginning of the film, thus grounding themselves firmly in the multicultural blender that mainstream Indian cinema can be, but sadly that’s as close as we get to a zombie dance number.

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The Gutter’s own Beth Watkins has no patience with zombies that don’t dance.