Sonia John’s Fright Night is a mystery thriller that uncovers the truth of a murder four years prior. Six people wake up tied up in a strange house. And as the night unfolds, they realise they are all involved, one way or another, in the death of a young girl. The race to survive the night is one, but along the way, we find out disturbing truths about their pasts. As with all works of art, Fright Night has its mind in a good place, but the execution is sub par. Visually, the film stays decent, but it falters on…
Author: olamideadio
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Kayode Kasum’s Ajosepo is a romantic comedy set around family drama. It tests the boundaries of old relationships and sets the foundations for new ones. At its heart is reunion and reconciliation and the knowledge that there are multiple perspectives to the same story. Dapo (Mike Afolarin) and Tani (Tomike Adeoye) are set to be married. Their families assemble a day before the wedding, and the drama unfolds in Tani’s family house. Dapo’s family is a dysfunctional, toxic unit best characterised by his manipulative mom (Ronke Oshodi Oke). His dad (Yemi Solade) is a philanderer. His brother, Jide (Timini Egbunson),…
The Two Aishas stars leading Kannywood actresses Rahama Sadau and Maryam Booth as best friends at loggerheads. The 2023 film is a family and political drama about the strains ambition can place on cordial relationships. While it sets out to highlight the place of friendship in real-life ambitions, the execution is predictable, thus diminishing the emotional sting that predicates the story. Childhood friends, both named Aisha, now married to politicians, have found themselves at loggerheads because of their husbands. Jamal Jibril (Paul Utomi) is set to receive the deputy governor ticket, and due to some tax discrepancies, the ticket is…
Dika Ofoma’s A Quiet Monday is a social drama about the illegal IPOB (Independent People of Biafra) sit-at-home mandate in Southeastern Nigeria. After the federal government locked Nnamdi Kanu up on secessionist charges, his followers mandated Monday sit-at-homes across the Southeast in protest. Not everyone in the Southeast belongs to or agrees with IPOB. However, they continue to suffer. A Quiet Monday is about the human consequences of that sweeping Monday stay-at-home mandate. Siblings Kamnonu (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and Ogbonnna (Emmanuel Igwe) are codependent. Kamnonu is a gifted tailor, and her younger brother supports her. A customer’s emergency cloth delivery on…
The loneliest queue on earth is the unemployment queue. Try as you might to strike partnerships, to draw inspiration from friends and family, to fortify yourself with platitudes of encouragement, the loneliness of circumstance still sits with you. And it can lead you down very dark paths. It is the honesty in this loneliness that Idiagi Ernest Eromosele tries to capture in The Long Wait. Drawing from personal experiences, the writer-director lays out the bleak reality of the unemployed graduate in a Nigerian clime. The scarcity of social contact, the barrage of rejections, and the dirtiness that comes with accepting…
Benn Nwokike’s directorial debut, Insecure, opens with an impulsive meet-cute. Our protagonists are introduced by the fateful collapse of a blind date. It is cute but quite irrational. The foundation and intent of the scene suffice, but there are problems with the decision-making, a character inefficiency that cannot be shaken off by the viewer. But it doesn’t matter to the plot because it soldiers on. It has achieved its establishment without overarching thoughts on its consequences to the film as a whole and to the characters within that scene. This opener is a metaphor for the entire film. Insecure stars…
Abu-Bakr S. Adamu, a member of the Alpha Flicks initiative, is a director of the mundane by evidence at hand. His film, Tsoro Da Ruwa, explores the extremities of youthful exuberance and the domestic consequences of such actions. What Abu-Bakr recognises is that there is a story, and there is jeopardy in the ordinary, in simple things like a parent punishing a child, like going for a swim and experiencing the joy of the now. Tsoro Da Ruwa (Fear and Water) follows Ibrahim (Shuaibu Abubakar Sadiq), who, while grounded by his father, is enticed by his friends to go for…
There is a running irony throughout Moses Inwang’s Dead Serious. The most obvious is how the title negates everything the film espouses. How a work of art can lack such self-awareness it degenerates into a melodramatic, saccharine piece, especially when the work is about such a sensitive topic. This is, without a doubt, the shallowest, most insensitive anti-suicide film I have ever seen. And there is no one to blame—not Sabinus, not the comic duo Pato and Vero (played by Lawal Nasiru Bolaji and Toyin ‘Tomama’ Albert)—other than the writer-director, Moses Inwang. Dead Serious lacks such self-consciousness that it takes…
Daniel Bell-Gam’s short film, Are You Really Fine, is a calm, reflective vista of the ocean and a panoply of lovely visuals. It is a work of technical integrity, a beautiful piece with similar subjects to match. Daniel Bell-Gam’s short offers little outside all of this. ‘The Pick Up’ Review: Minimalist Short Film Digs Deep into a Bag of Expressiveness The short film, if one might call it that, is a monologue by an unknown character asking after another unknown character’s well-being. Layered beneath the mundane monologue are various happy subjects enjoying the view and ebb of the ocean. Accompanying…
Taiwo Egunjobi’s third feature film, A Green Fever, stretches his oeuvre of small to medium-sized cast films set in sleepy towns or small locations, featuring various noir-inspired characters. In this submission, Egunjobi plays with a haunting, deceptive intimacy among several dishonest characters, leading the viewer to question, at first, what the truth is, and who exactly can be trusted. A Green Fever shows early that none of the characters are reliable, and the question switches midway into the film: what exactly is the truth? Alongside Taiwo Egunjobi are his long-term creative partners, Isaac Ayodeji, who has served as screenwriter on…