Go Goa Gone to Get a Sequel

The popular Indian zomcom film, Go Goa Gone, is soon to have a sequel. The new film, written and directed by the same team responsible for the 2013 cult favorite about three friends who go on a vacation (attending a party) in Goa only to end up hunted by zombies, will include many of the same actors, including Saif Ali Khan as Boris, as well as Kunal Khemu and Vir Das.


Saif Ali Khan was quoted as saying, “I will return as Boris in the sequel. But this time, I’ll be on a different mission. Raj and DK (the directors) have found an interesting premise for the second installment, which is in sync with the first part. They are currently writing the script.”

Go Goa Gone is marketed as India's first Hindi-language (Bollywood) zomcom, which was similarly claimed for the 2013 film Rock the Shaadi by director Navdeep Singh but which was not released in theaters in India. These zomcoms were joined in 2016 by the Tamil-language action film Miruthan, yet another story of somewhat zany or bumbling protagonists striving to stay alive in a world overrun by the hungry undead. (A more serious Tamil-language short film, Uruvan, is available on YouTube.) I couldn't figure out whether or not the sequel to Miruthan was ever produced.

While Go Goa Gone may be billed as India's first zomcom, it is not the nation's first zombie film. That honor may go to Rise of the Zombie, which was directed by Devaki Singh & Luke Kenny and also released in 2013.


What was it about 2013 that saw the production of three separate zombie films in India?

Bad Timing Season Two Finale

The YouTube web series "Bad Timing" has just seen the finale of it's second season. 

This romantic comedy is set in a post-apocalyptic world, with the hapless Andy striving to find the girl of his dreams.

Any Old Crap Won't Do Anymore?

Is the public losing interest in the zombie as an icon of horror? Are audiences and readers abandoning the zombie narrative because it is no longer "fresh," or because it has lost its edginess and ... brains? As a reviewer for the "Days Gone" game recently noted: "Times have changed. People don’t just gobble up any old crap with zombies in it anymore."


I hope the overkill of mediocre zombie productions--in film, publishing, and gaming--will actually result in a return to the zombie as an icon of Otherness. As scholar Elizabeth Aiossa argues in her new book The Subversive Zombie, the zombie narrative used to be radical enough to serve as a vehicle for the critique of "the very real diseases of racism, sexism, materialism, and individualism."


The resistant quality of the zombie narrative has been watered down, Aiossa suggests, as the dons of the Entertainment industry see money in the restoration and promotion of masculine power, female dependency, racist assumptions, heteronormative stereotypes, and monocultural flatness.


This is a topic that I will frequently return to in this blog as it seems essential to my hope of applying a more academic analysis to the zombie narrative.

The Night Eats the World

“This looks like a zombie film that prioritizes atmosphere and characterization rather than action or outright gore.” Well, that can only be good.

Here's a link to Jim Vorel's heads-up on the new film Night Eats the World.

Zombies on the Syllabus

The zombie is more than just a fictional monster intended to scare us. It is also a vehicle that can help students get a better grasp of their subject material. Take, for instance, the way Dr. Tara Smith, a professor at Kent State University, teaches epidemiology. She makes her lessons on how infectious diseases spread more exciting by illustrating zombie outbreaks in popular culture stories. Smith uses media including "The Walking Dead," "28 Days Later" and "World War Z" as a way to explain infections to her students. Smith is also a member of the “Zombie Research Society,” an organization created by authors, filmmakers and scientists as a means of collaboration between the three fields. “We help writers and filmmakers make their zombie movies as realistic as they can be, considering the circumstances,” she said. “We don’t really research zombies, of course, but we do help people write realistic stories about them.”


Read the original report on Prof. Smith's syllabus at kentwired.com.

Suburbia and the Taboo: "Santa Clara Diet"

Without access to Netflix it is impossible for me to offer any ideas about the new sitcom "Santa Clara Diet," though from a number of online reviews it looks tasty. What I wonder about is... why? Is there a darker, political message beneath this zomcom?

Perhaps it's not too far a speculation that this comedy builds from the idea that a suburban lifestyle--with the struggles that go into achieving and maintaining the big house and keeping the kids in private schools--is nothing short of deadening.

The trailer looks entertainingly fast-paced. (See it embedded in the Esquire review below.) "Santa Clara Diet" may be reaching out to the same audience as "Dexter" and perhaps "Interview with a Vampire" with the notion that killing is acceptable if the ones you kill somehow deserve to die. That's not necessarily an attitude we should be encouraging in our society, though many would disagree with me on that.

Esquire Review

Go With Me ~ Subtle Drama and Authentic Horror

"Some people are just bad."

If you go by the few newspaper critics who bothered to review it, "Go With Me" was a "lethargic" failure masked as a revenge thriller. I'm glad I didn't read the reviews. I found this film, originally released in earlier this year under the title "Blackway" (also the title of Castle Freeman's novel from which this film was adapted), was a subtle drama building to a sudden and satisfying climax of vigilante payback.

Both Anthony Hopkins and Hal Holbrook offer moments of stunning excellence as actors in a film filled with a cast of secondary actors who provide strong portrayals of people who are either in terror of or in the thrall of a smalltown psychopathic gangster named Blackway played by Ray Liotta. For his part Liotta falls somewhat flat as the psychopath until his last appearance, when he visually displays an unhinged insanity that he had kept under wraps throughout the film.

Building upon a series of revelatory flashbacks, "Go With Me" allows the camera to trail along with lumberyard workers Lester and Nate as they search for the psychopathic Blackway, presumably to "persuade" him to cease his harassment of newcomer Lillian (Julia Stiles). Moving just beyond the initial terror of Blackway's dangerous violation of Lilluan's life, the film caught my interest by building upon an early doubt that a mild old man and a timid young man can "talk some sense" into a deranged bully. As the film advances so did my realization that none of these three are as "feeble" as they seem. While vigilantism outside of the superhero genre is frowned upon, there is always satisfaction to be found in seeing the victim stand up to the bully--though the delight comes nowhere near to the satisfaction of those early 70s revenge films, the original "Walking Tall" (1973) and "Lipstick" (1976).

I'm glad director Daniel Alfredson avoided the cheap horror stunts, allowing the bullies (there are more than one) to stay down without those "Halloween"-style resurrections. His revenge film was refreshingly real. If you find this one for download or on DVD, it's worth the viewing. Ignore the amateurish and juvenile reviewers online or the West Coast critics.