By Ali Baylay

Executive Image Movies and Franco Films Presents: Emeka Ike, Nadia Buari, Chika Ike, Fredo Arico, Emeka Ani; Production Manager: Ben Ayosinti; Producer: Kenneth Okonkwo; Editor: Nnoshiri Charles Brain; Exec. Producer: Kenneth Okonkwo; Director: Ugo Ugbor; Principal Locations: Ghana/Nigeria; 133 mins. c2009.

The Followers is a topic that invokes religious connotations as in ‘disciples’, but don’t be fooled brother, this is a film glorifying animism and devil worship with Christian church simply as a front. To a large extent however, the use of such plot device to carry the story to the finish line didn’t prove worthy at all. To be honest, I keep asking myself the essence of devil worship in the tract. Let me belabor the story here for you, but don’t feel disappointed if all the plot asides not useful to the story are not told. We simply pick the grains from the chaffs.

Sandra (Nadia Buari), an uppity clean cut young girl is forced by her mother to join her in the Wednesday prayer-worship at the church. At the church, while prayers go on inside, Sandra nonchalant, sits outside and toys with her cell phone. Inside, one of the worshippers fall swoon on the floor obviously taken over by the demon but manages to enter the spirit of Sandra and provide her gateway to the underworld. In the underworld, Sandra is betrothed to a demon who won’t allow her marry to humans. He kills a suitor who meets Sandra’s mother asking for Sandra’s hand in marriage. 

Having buried one suitor, burial or concern for the death of suitor not shown in the movie, Sandra meets Bob (Emeka Ike) the same guy who sacrificed his mother to the devil for the sake of getting rich in the Warriors of Satan. Without a glitch, Bob marries Sandra and except for occasional sneezes when Sandra’s underworld husband, the Demon visits him in his office, the marriage continues unabated.

Sandra did not have any child with Bob but she did have two girls with the Demon, as we see her feeding them in real life but lets them vanish into nothingness before Bob could enter the living room. In the last scenes of the Followers, the Demon airlifts Bob from in the arms of Sandra as they lay asleep in the bedroom, and deposits him by the way side at the thoroughfare in the heart of the city, while he takes Bob’s place by Sandra. The film ends.  

To be honest, I feel disappointed when the curtain went down on this movie. Unless part 3 might be in the making, I could call this a cliff-hanger resolution. What powers Bob might have possessed that makes him not killed by the Demon like did the first suitor, and there’s  not a single confrontation between Bob and the spirit world. This here makes the story flat. No intensity. Nada.

Pastor Jude’s flirtatious and sexual gestures toward his female followers in the church are used understandably as an exposition. But even in the face of such device, the scenes and incidents are so long that they take on a life of their own. This movie would have hit the mark if there was to have been a confrontation between the gods of the underworld as is in the Trojan War over Helen. Pastor Jude would have inherited Bob to redeem his wife Sandra from the grips of the Demon. In speaking structurally,  we would have enjoyed the essence of the followers if there had been open war of the gods over their human interests, and not their non-sense in the picture.

Director Emeka H. Umeasor, takes  a close and personal look at Sins of Rachael. You can find it so in the composition of the shots as they interpret on screen.  The  excessive use of extreme close-ups, and medium close-ups bring even viewers closer to the events and characters on screen. Beautiful shots befitting beautiful story.

Screenwriter Andy Nwakalor weaves a beautiful drama here too for our viewing pleasure. He tells the story of Rachael (Joy Torty), a fountainhead character and a straight faced born-again christian believer, whose father, Chief Nnaji (Jim Lawson Madweke) for his own political ambitions, wants her marry Christopher (Akume Akume). Rachael in turn is in love with a choir boy Sunday (Mike Ezuruonye), from her church. Yet, in obedience to the word of the bible, as thus, “obey thy father’, she asks her suitor Christopher if he could find a place in his heart for Christ in exchange for politics.

Christopher is a born, bred, groomed, nurtured, tutored, carved, and schooled politician (a politician with manaical disposition, though) finds Rachael’s ultimatum impossible. His father could even skin him alive for joining the church. Both Sunday and Christopher jostle for Rachael’s hand in marriage anyway, until Rachael on her way from church choir practice, is raped by Steve (Emeka Ike, the devil worshipper who brutally murders his mother in the Warriors of Satan) and conceives thereon. The story goes into turbo gear.

The household of Chief Nnaji is in disarray by this incident. Rachael’s pregnancy will sure ruin his politics and therefore wants abortion, or she and her mother should leave his household. Both Christopher and Sunday go ballistic in their different ways: Christopher couldn’t stand the thought of that THING  in  Rachael’s stomach. Sunday calls Rachael’s unborn child, ‘bastard’, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. Rachael in the middle of this rigmarole, is playing it by the will of God, but no abortion. Her Character, except for frequent outburst in cries, is completely flat and anti-radioactive.

The drama takes yet another turn when Rachael runs into her raper, Steve, and confronts him with the truth. Rachael wants confession and acceptance of God for his evils, so she can forgive him. Steve easily accepts Christ alright, but before Rachael could have his child, Christopher murders him. At his bedside, Rachael witnesses Chief Nnaji (her father) accepts Christ. Christopher enters the same scene, a giant-size cross like a burden of sin, hanging on his neck, obviously a born again christian. Sunday repents and marries Rachael after she put to bed her fatherless baby girl.

The biblical Rachael’s sin, if it could be so called, is when she steals her father Leban’s god as she escapes with her husband Jacob, into Israel. But Andy Nwakalor’s Sins of Rachael cries out loud two philosophical thoughts: Good versus evil. Spiritualism versus existentialism. This script is the writer’s uneqivocal take on Nollywood’s obsession with both political and financial aggrandizement, in disregard for fear of God as Rachael portrays.

This side of the Atlantic (America) we call Sins of Rachael, a beautiful testament to Rowe versus Wade (pro-life versus Pro-choice). Simply put.

Ali Baylay/Publisher