A suburb in Thane district has become the seat of a fantastical phenomenon that was born as far back as 17th century in a Caribbean country. Marathi film director Aditya Sarpotdar is proudly taking credit for helming the first zombie film in Marathi, and that too, based on a story set in Dombivli. Zombivli, which released on January 26, stars Amey Wagh, Vaidehi Parashurami and Lalit Prabhakar, and is the story of Sudhir (Wagh), an engineer who, with his pregnant wife Sapna (Parashurami) moves into a housing colony that’s plagued by acute water shortage. The storyline leads up to a zombie attack which is sparked in a hospital due to infected water.

Historians say that the first references to the walking dead culture could date back to Ancient Greece where bodies were found held down by rocks. But it became popular in Haiti when West African slaves were brought to work in the sugarcane fields, and although death seemed dearer than the conditions they lived and worked in, the slaves resisted suicide for fear of turning into zombies, human in form, physically strong, but soulless and devoid of self-awareness. Their only aim, to feed on human flesh.