Scream Stream: Why Go Goa Gone is a criminally underrated horror comedy

Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK are the filmmakers' duo who have always surprised the audience with the choice of movies or even series they direct. Back in 2013, Raj and DK brought something unusual to the screens with Go Goa Gone. Starting from the title of the film to the concept, everything was A-1 and properly planned. Something like zombies was brought into the real world by Michael Jackson back in 1982 with the music video Thriller.

In no time, Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi dances to the song Golimar from the film Donga which is cut, copy and paste of Thriller. Why is this being mentioned here? The film starts with Kunal Kemmu and Vir Das' characters seen smoking pot and watching the Golimar video featuring zombies in it. In the next moment, they see their friend (Anand Tiwari) get smeared in food which makes him look like a zombie.

The entire title of the film is not even mentioned until the first half an hour of the runtime. but the makers quickly establish why they go to Goa and what happens with them. Similar to something which they constantly say, "What do we know, what have we learnt?"

The horror element comes much later in the film, before that there's a glimpse of 'khooni' Monday, of course. Go Goa Gone shows how zombies come into existence due to a strong drug that was sold at a rave party. However, the film is funnier than being scary which is pretty rare in horror-comedies. In many films, the scary moments take over the funny part or even during a comedy scene, it's the horror element that cracks one up.

But Go Goa Gone entirely depends on its dialogues and the Hindi ones were penned by Kunal. The film doesn't have a 'lead' lead cast despite having Saif Ali Khan as a fake Russian accent blond-haired mafia. He comes much later in the movie and also vanishes for a very long time.

To think about, what makes Go Goa Gone scary? I feel it's the surprising moments that have been laid out well with the amazing camera work. Touted as India's first zombie film, the movie explores the reanimated corpses most funnily while Hollywood was making them horrific with World War Z also released in 2013. Around the same time, there was another Hollywood zom-com titled Bath Salt Zombies which showed bath salts having drugs that turn humans into zombies.

Raj and DK made the film with a 90-minute runtime, a rarity for Bollywood. But they put all the necessary sequences of introducing zombies, fighting them, getting attacked by them and eventually getting rid of them. The film explores very little of Goa as they are shown stuck on a private island.

Interestingly, the film also gives out life lessons like 'drug kills', 'friend in need is a friend indeed' and more. Although it's not a scary movie to be listed under the horror genre, it's criminally underrated and finally, the film received its long due cult status.

Go Goa Gone is available to watch on ZEE5.