Anthill Studios and Inkblot Studios present, Toyin Abraham (Abigail), Timini Egbuson (Dare Williams), Shaffey Bello (Mrs. Williams), Ijeoma Aniebo (Nana). Yemi Solade (Doctor) Writers, Yusuf Carew, Akay Mason; Director, Akay Ogba; First Assistant Director, Abosi Ogba; Producer, Victoria Akujobi; Executive Producers, Niyi Akinmolayan, Ola Olaniyi; Director of Photography, Joseph Oladunjoye; Screenplay by Akhigbe Ilozobhie; Original Screenplay, Olawale Carew. © 2019
I have reviewed Anchor Baby, and now I am checking out Elevator Baby. One thing with Toyin Abraham movies is her rapid-fire deliveries in films, like one on prosaic. One too high to stop talking. She delivers in the authentic Balogun Market women colloquial dialect. It cracks out of her mouth like the October 1 eve firecrackers over Lagos city-tataratatata! Here in Elevator Baby, Abigail (Toyin Abraham) holds court with a proud, insolent, and disrespectful son, Dare Williams (Timini Egbuson) of Mrs. Williams (Shaffey Bello).
Dare is an intolerable young man who thinks can walk on everybody, including his mother, because he hails from the wealthy Williams family. His mother is overprotective of him and does not want him to stay out late at night. Last night, he kept his mother and stepdad awake the whole time because they are afraid for him not to get in trouble or get drunk and have a fatal accident. It has happened before, and a friend of his lost his life. At the night club with his friends, they have spent so much money, and none of his friends could help him out with the bill. The night club has to take his staff (his dead father’s gold-staff) from him.
In the morning, he gets home enraged at his mother for the embarrassment she lets him go through because she never put enough allowance on his debit card. The mother had done so deliberately. He is so mad that when his stepfather, one who has spent the entire night with his mother waiting for him to come home, interferes, he gets a resounding rebuke. He says ungodly things about his mother; he calls her unholy names worthy of a whore, that could make one ashamed of himself. He screamed out a jaw-dropping, head-shaking, and teeth-gnashing statements at her. He didn’t care. The only girl he loves, Nana (Ijeoma Aniebo), watching him go off on his mother, dismisses him. Next, the two friends he calls “my guys” throw him out of their apartment. Now, he has no friends, no Nana, parents, and no money.
Dare leaves the interview dejected when he steps back in the elevator and sees Abigail, her lips pouted with anger and disappointment, for not visiting with Mrs. Njoku and have to come back on Monday. They are both not quite in the mood to hang out in a cubicle of an elevator. Dare is morose, and it seems Abigail’s delivery pains start getting severe because she cannot standstill. The elevator doors shut, on both of them, and the machine starts downward spiral but stalls, electricity goes off. The building lost power. When electricity came back in the building after a few minutes, the elevator goes into a free-fall, and then abruptly comes to a heart-stopping stop. Abigail’s delivery pain starts in earnest as she sprawls on the floor of the elevator, screaming with pain.
Abigail has no one to turn to for help but the stranger with her in the elevator. Dare has no experience in handling a pregnant woman. When he calls one of “his guys” and hurriedly explains his situation, he makes a joke of him. He calls Nana, and Nana calls his mother, who, in turn, begs her husband, Dare’s stepfather, a medical doctor (Yemi Solade) to rush there help out Dare. He helps Dare step by step remotely delivers Abigail’s baby boy. By then, news of Dare and Abigail, pregnant, stuck in an elevator, and delivering a baby is christened by social media as “Elevator Baby.”
Both Dare and Abigail have character flaws that, by nature, make them alike. They are about to face purgatory together. Abigail had lived a life of scam, getting out-of-wedlock pregnancies for money, though she had either lost the child or given birth to the wrong gender. The present one is for the Orga of her Madam that she works for, and she is visiting her office to confess to her when she gets stuck. Dare is no lesser. He is witnessing and experiencing the pains mothers endure to bring children into this world. And by him taking part in delivering a child opens his eyes to a new perception of life. Dare sued for peace with his stepfather. Abigail proposes naming her child after Dare, and Dare promises to speak to his mother so that Abigail could find abode in his home. The hands of a stranger!
Yusuf Carew and Akay Mason must be a practiced and expert creator of characters. They created two antagonistic characters and put them in a cage. They are already tormented, annoyed, and angered by the world outside, and therefore, like dynamites, ready to explode. Being put in a cage (elevator) in such tight proximity with one another, you may think they’ll kill and devour each other as they almost did. They are never happy campers. They are aggressive, abusive, and cursive to one another. However, by the time they get to know each other, spent grueling hours in confinement, and the movie denouement, they work out of the cubicle as a loving family would. Dare’s friends recover his gold staff for him. They have come full circle in their characters from bad to good—a beautiful story to boot.