Unlike, say, Hollywood or even the South Korean entertainment industry, India’s zombie cinema output has been meagre. Our various film industries’ contributions to this genre have been limited—Go Goa Gone (2013), the Netflix shows Ghoul (2018) and Betaal (2020), a Dibakar Banerjee short for Ghost Stories (2020). Director Aditya Sarpotdar, a fan of Korean zombie period drama Kingdom (2019, Netflix), wanted to change that. “It is quite shocking that this genre hasn’t seen more,” he says. Sarpotdar’s Marathi film Zombivli, recently released in theatres, fills that gap. In it, zombies descend upon Dombivli, a city in Thane, Maharashtra.
Though the zombie comedy has all the cliches we associate with the walking dead—groaning, slow movements, spooky faces—Sarpotdar and his writers also make it a point to highlight several socio-economic schisms and…