Orisis Film and Entertainment presents Judith Audu (Nneka), Seun Ajayi (Raymond), Destiny Osagiede (Okoroshi 1), Tope Teleda (Dr.Dauda), Chiwetalu Agu (Chief Okonkwo), Ifu Ennada (Doris), Ejatareme A. Michael (Willy Willy). Asso Producer, Gallo T. MakamaDirector of Photography, Michael Omonua; Script, Africa Ukoh, Abba. Makama; Producer, Director, Abba T. Makama;Executive Producer, Remini H. Makama. © 2019
I start this review today, and in two days, on October 31st, America will be celebrating Halloween. “Celebrating” will not be appropriate. America will be looking forward to ghosts, spirits, dead parents, dead neighbors, and gobbling. In a quiet wealthy neighborhood, a deceased old spinster down the road died in her immaculate house two weeks before she was discovered. Ominous noises and shrieking and evil birds of night and death come from within every year, on this night on October 31st. No one passed her house after dark. Our neighbors display giant spiders, skeletons, and scary pictures that will make the hair rise. And crown it up with pumpkins.
Raymond’s (Seun Ajayi) character brings me to recall Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa, the center character in the book, is a traveling salesperson who caters to his impoverished parents, wakes up one day, transforms into a giant cockroach. Just as Gregor Samsa was embarrassing to his parents and sister, for the neighbors not to know, so they were afraid of him. The Boss from Samsa‘s office came to check why such abrupt absence, ran away when he saw what Samsa had metamorphosed into giant vermin.
The Lost Okoroshi reminds me so much of Metamorphosis. The Lost Okoroshi starts with our character, Raymond Obinwa. He keeps having harrowing dreams about spirits dancing and coming towards him but always runs from them. As usual, he always jolts out the horrible sleep, and he sometimes wakes drenched in sweat. Scary stuff. His wife Nneka has taken notice of her husband waking up from his sleep with a jolt. She and her husband, being young and ignorant of the Igbo culture, take this dream lightly. Chief Okonkwo (Chiwetalu Agu), the next-door neighbor with traditional experience, enlightens Raymond about the importance of the Igbo spirits he encounters in his dream.
Raymond, “Big, colorful. Beautiful. If you saw how they danced.”
Chief Okonkwo, “Hold on…. Did they chase you? Did they catch you? Were you afraid?”
“No, I wasn’t afraid.”
“Did you recognize any of them? I don’t blame you. You are born in this new era. You don’t have to fear them. They are your ancestral spirits.”
Chief Okonkwo poisons himself shortly after and dies. He had shown too much love for Raymond by appearing to him in his sleep and crowns him with the Okoroshi masquerade. You should see Nneka when she wakes from sleep and finds her husband turned into a masquerade spirit. She cries, pulls her hair, and whisks her husband to Divine Clinic. All patients in the clinic run away. He vanishes from his wife at a certain point, going nowhere, and plunges into the asphalt jungle. He dances everywhere he goes, and people dance with him and shower him with money.
Then, the masquerade befriends Willy Willy (Ejateramie A. Michael) off the street, who becomes his sidekick. Added to Willy Willy is a prostitute named Doris (Ifu Enada). He helped save her from his Boss, not wanting to pay her for sexual service and trying to strangle her. I start to believe Okoroshi has feelings for Doris. He lets Willy Willy give the money they gained from the street to Doris. Okoroshi drops a necklace when he sees Doris having affairs with a man by the roadside. He was despondent, I guess.
In African cultural traditions and psychoanalyst, Dr. Dauda (Tope Tedela) runs a parallel investigation into Okoroshi. He interviews people about the presence of the mysterious masquerade in Lagos. While his interviews go on, the Igbo Peoples Secret Society Of Heritage of Restoration and Reclamation chapter of Lagos kidnaps Okoroshi and brings him to their meeting. However, the discussion over the transfer of Okoroshi to Abuja from Lagos must have tormented Okoroshi. The session becomes a rabble-rouser for the spirit, and he vanishes from there. He then runs into area boys, and the leader stabs Okoroshi to death. He evaporates, leaving behind the mask.
At the top of this review, I mention Gregor Samsa, the character in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis who turned into a giant cockroach. The novella could be symbolic or allegoric, and I, therefore, couldn’t go into dissecting it here. Samsa’s life of a struggle to cater to his impoverished parents and sister is comparative to Raymond’s condition in The Lost Okoroshi. Raymond also wakes up terrified in his new disposition, and his wife Nneka doesn’t know what to do with this thing in her bed but cries her heart out. You hear Raymond talking about his dreams when he gets rich, same as Samsa’s dreams. He had asked his Boss to get an advance payment to pay for Chief Okonkwo’s medical bill. Only to come home and find Chief has killed himself with rat poison.
Chief Okonkwo and Raymond bonded as neighbors, and the old traditional authority grew to love the young man. See how they culturally greet over the can of palm wine; one can see he appreciates Raymond. And as the custodian of the highest Igbo spirit, Chief Okonkwo has come to believe that Raymond could be the rightful inheritor. In death, therefore, he leaves Okoroshi with him. Yet, as Chief Okonkwo says, modern-day technologies noise has pushed spirits away from us. We see how Okoroshi got lost from the meeting and solemnly roams the streets of Lagos away from the noise.