PLS RT begins with Kasope Briggs captured in a wooden crate; frightened, unaware of her location and begging to be released. She brings out her phone to make a video to try and upload to her Twitter account. That doesn’t work. Then she tries to send out a normal text tweet and, to no surprise, that also doesn’t work. There’s a digital intrigue the film has built at this point. After exhausting her body in screams and struggles she reaches for her phone—now a kind of limb we all have—to seek for help.
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Directed by Ifeanyi Barbara Chidi, a prolific TV writer with titles like Riona and Crime and Justice Lagos under her belt, PLS RT captures the story of Kasope Briggs (Folu Storms), who is kidnapped after a night out and confined to a wooden crate as she begs for her life. It tries to distill the frequent kidnaps we see and hear about to a single story with minimal success because the character we are asked to sympathise with is lacking. Despite that, Folu Storms (Crime and Justice Lagos) is good in the way she reaches for slivers of hope through the crate and cycles through the many emotions of captivity—fear, desperation, rage and resignation, making do with the fragments she’s given.
The film starts with an interesting premise, invoking the alarm system we have created on the internet, especially with Twitter, but quickly abandons it for a secondary, less effective plot point. This abandonment rings truer on a visual level too. When we are confined to the crate with Kasope, that singular location is effective in its stifling. But when we leave the crate, the film loses its grip on both direction and story. The lighting of the scenes, especially when she leaves the crate, finds no form or structure and the story takes a turn that seems in service of shock only.
PLS RT has its heart in a good place. The kidnapping epidemic is a real issue that has been pushed to the abandoned corner of statistics, the government doesn’t care and there’s not much the people can do except retweet posts and contribute to crowdfunding campaigns that line the pockets of criminals. But a film that has a social justice core must know where to throw its weight on. The film’s messaging comes in the form of posters of real missing people after its end. By the time the posters appear, the urgency has already been lost to the film’s missteps.
PLS RT premiered July 27 on X before it was released on YouTube.
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Side Musings
- The quotes used to separate the film into segments were unnecessary because they didn’t offer any new perspective and I think if you use quotes like that in a film it must be absolutely necessary and also memorable.
- Foul Storms plays Fikayo Holloway in Red Circle and Kasope Briggs in this, she’s collecting Lagos nepo baby names like infinity stones.
- There is a growing list of writers from the TV world taking a new turn to direct their own short films/projects.
