At an Indian Institute of Technology-type college, the evil scientist Darwendra (Mohan Kapur) conducts an experiment that turns obedient engineering students into actual zombies. The flesh-craving undead are mostly the college’s toppers and scholars – this lot really does like to be the first in everything – leaving the stragglers and stoners in charge.
The rescuers include a pair of best friends (Sachin Kavetham and Tanishq Chaudhary), a lovey-dovey couple (Jessy Lever and Rose Sardana) and a future Nobel Prize winner (Ranjan Raj) who has miraculously already invented a serum to combat the zombies. They are led on their mission by their satin nightie-wearing teacher Braganza (Anupriya Goenka).
The reluctant warriors lack a coherent plan but never resourcefulness or daring. Their weapons of mass distraction include a porn video, a surprise test and an impromptu dance that is set to a cool remix of Maar Daala from Devdas (2002).
The zombified students also help in their own way by behaving inconsistently. They are senselessly staggering about one minute and are surprisingly receptive to instruction the other. On the outside, inspector Reddy (Shantanu Anam) reaffirms the police’s reputation for bringing up the rear.
Indian Institute of Zombies, directed by Alok Kumar Dwivedi and Gaganjeet Singh, is too acutely aware of its intended audience – undemanding college students – to create an experience that travels far beyond this age cohort. The Hindi comedy-thriller, which is out in cinemas, itself feels like a low-budget filmmaking experiment dreamt up between boring lectures and punishing deadlines, made with whatever or whoever was available.
The movie has an excellent title that the writing sometimes struggles to live up to. The screenplay by Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal is all over the place, with little sense of pacing or flow. The 137-minute film is stacked with both hilarious lines and humour that doesn’t land.
Yet, IIZ has its share of surprises and flashes of inspiration. In between lurching from one scene to the next, IIZ proves that if there is hope, it can be found among the backbenchers. If the aim was a cult experience that will have a permanent afterlife on the laptops of students on campuses across the country, IIZ is already there.
Several scenes are crackling in of themselves, without necessarily connecting to the main frame. Had the all-vibe and some-logic film been tighter and more attentive to its own crackpot rhythms, it might have been a true winner.
A bunch of sweet young performers who actually behave like college students enact scenarios that are sometimes very sharp. If you thought that cultural activities have no utility in an engineering college, think again. Ditto if you think that the planet should be run by the studious apple polishers, which is what the ridiculously named Darwendra wants.
Buried in the chaos, but nevertheless visible, are slivers of rebellion against conformity, mind control and a dictatorial leader pitted against students who simply won’t listen to him.
