Media 23 presents Echelon Mbadiwe (Kamso), Ken Erics (Ikolo)Somadina Adinma (Abacha), Ifeoma Obinwa (Pino-Pino), Keezyto (Ose) Lorenzo Menakaya (Mansa). Cinematography, Neec Nonso; Screenplay Ebuka Njoku; Executive Producer Anegbu Achalla, Producer, Lorenzo Menakaya, Ebuka Njoku; Director, Ebuka Njoku. © 2022
What would come to mind nowadays when you stumble on “Yahoo mail” on the metaverse? Doesn’t it look ancient? Before Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, and so on, so forth, there was Yahoo. Today, the billion-dollar industry seems ancient. Nollywood Yahoo+ is only in name and not even connotative of what you imagine. I know you watched Blackberry Madness (2018), and GSN Scandal (2012). Those two no-sense jokes. Yahoo+ is no joke, no-nonsense. It is knee-deep into human-part harvesting and presented to us in a macabre nature of a drama. Horrendous and Horrifying! Mind-boggling as Terrifying!
The Writer, Ebuka Njoku cooked us a blazing and spicy stew of a drama you can only find in the woods of Nolly. Abacha and Ose are young, hungry to make quick gentry. Their gods are wasting time with their fortunes, and they couldn’t wait any longer. Like the two friends, Kuuku (Adjety Anang) and Nii-Aryee (Majid Michel) in A Sting in A Tale (2009), that heart-rendering tale of two friends who wants to make it so badly that they went astray, together and brings them destruction. Then comes tragedy, and they both die without fulfillment of their dreams but managed to make it to the afterlife rejoicing in the Sunshine. Yahoo is not the type. It is gruesome, as it is macabre.
When Ose (Keezlo) asks Pino-Pino (Ifeoma Obinwa), a sex partner of his to bring another girl for his friend Abacha (Somadina Adinma), it never dawned on what Pino-Pino and Kamsa were walking into. To them, it was simply “runs” (prostitution) to make quick money. Pino-Pino brings Kamsa with her. Kamsa is pressed for money her boyfriend Abacha needed and doesn’t want to fail him. It is like a slap in the face for both Kamsa and Abacha unexpectedly finding or catching each other in this clumsy situation. Kamsa had to prostitute herself to find the money for her beloved in her theater class, and she never thought Abacha has been having affairs with prostitutes. The same goes for Abacha, never in his wildest imagination, that the love of his life, Kamsa, could “runs” the street.
There are more surprises in store for all the actors. Just as Kamsa is in shock to learn that her boyfriend who she has got in all kinds of messiness to please, is as well surprised to learn that Kamsa prostitutes herself for money. The writer is not done with us yet: Ose called Pino-Pino for a grander macabre design than a simple “runs” unknown to his friend, Abacha. Abacha and Ose had accepted the cultic ritual to have a break in their ill luck. Ose didn’t tell Abacha, for he too didn’t know the extent of the ritual. They both imagined a festival in a forest, with roosters slaughtered and blood splattered all over the girls.
Now that the situation has presented itself as it is, Abacha has no choice but to go with the flow. He had to drug Kamsa and prepares her for the ritual. Kamsa seemingly didn’t get hallucinated enough and becomes suspicious as Abacha keeps telling her, how sorry he was. She runs downstairs and makes herself a strong coffee potent to ward off the drowsiness. Pino-Pino, on the other hand, is already passed out. Kamsa starts the fight but is soon overpowered by Ose, and she and Abacha are tied.
Then enters the boss, Ikolo (Ken Erics). Another surprise for Ose too. Instead of ritual, by taking the girls into the forest for sacrifice, no, Ikolo wants to harvest their parts for the overall boss, Mansa, in Hong Kong. Pino-Pino is placed on the operation table for salvaging, her harvested parts packaged in a bowl of ice, ready to be shipped out. Things soon get ugly. The salvager (doctor?) is shot by Abacha.
We have seen this movie before in A Sting in A Tale: two friends down on their luck take unorthodox means to succeed. The efforts of Kuuku and his friend were never realized. In a heated debate over the Yahoo deal, Ose asks the skeptic Abacha, “Is it Ikolo you don’t believe, or is it Mansa that you doubt?” “Why not I doubt them? Are they God? …Don’t you know some people have tried and didn’t succeed?” Ose argues back, “If worst comes to worst, it will be better than this our Nollywood ambition…we could escape this country’s curse…my brother, life is a sacrifice.” Such is the mindset of Ose, desperate to make it just like Kuuku in A Sting in A Tale.
Character motivation is one notable feature of Yahoo Plus. We see how for the love of money, Pino-Pino talks Kamsa into doing “runs” even as skeptical as she is, but desperate to make money to satisfy Abacha’s request. As a newby doing the “runs,” and as suspicious as she could be, she takes the position on four conditions: “ This has to be between me and you…number two, no pictures. The last condition is, I can only do it for N30k.”
The story gets complicated when Abacha sets his eyes on Kamsa. Both Kamsa and Abacha are not overwhelmed, once they both notice what the whole endeavor sounds like; especially so when Abacha witnesses the salvaging of Pino-Pino, and wouldn’t let the same thing happen to Kamsa. He has to fight for his girl and in the end, kills Ikolo and Ose kills Kamsa. Yet, he doesn’t know what to do with Ose’s and Ikolo’s dead body he had killed and Pino-Pino’s carcass.
Yahoo Plus has two drama characteristics: Irony of the situation and irony of the character. Essentially, the irony of the situation includes the irony of the plot. It is simply a reversal of a situation in a drama. For example, Ose and Abacha lure Kamsa and Pino-Pino into the trap of using them for a ritual. Little did the girls know they are walking into a horrendous and calamitous situation. However, Kamsa and Abacha reversed the situation around Ose and Ikolo. Ose shoots Abacha and wastes lots of shots in Kamsa dead. When Ose thinks he’s in the clear Abacha stabs him dead, manages to leave the scene and gets in the jeep, and leaves, Kamsa’s dead body behind. It’s like when a kidnapping is reversed: the kidnappers have to pay the ransom instead.
Or, in an irony of character, Kamso and Abacha form a direct opposite of Ose and Ikolo’s characters. Kamsa and Abacha, to Ikolo and Ose, are a done deal. But soon experience an unexpected outburst of resistance from both Kamsa and Abacha. Instead of Abacha, Ose, and Ikolo against the girls, Abacha jumps the fence to protect Kamsa after witnessing the gruesome surgical operation of Pino-Pino’s parts. Yet, Kamsa couldn’t make it alive, as Ose shoots both Ose and then Kamsa. He thinks Abacha is dead, but he comes back and stabs Ose dead.
An observer commented that the story is juvenile and not quite lighted. Forgive Yahoo Plus screenplay as one like presenting us an MFA project, it still surpasses projects like GSN Scandal and Blackberry Madness, in substance and content, considering stories in the realm of communication. If you asked me, I’ll say the Writer here is creative, inventive, exploring, and engaging. On engaging: the scene where Okoli joins Ose to harvest the body parts is long but not boring.
Yahoo Plus is a derogatory name appended to the gruesome and cannibalistic, and aggrandizing behaviors of people gone amok to get rich. The lighting too could be appropriate because it lends a macabre air to the project. At the time of writing this review, there is an EFCC burst of Yahoo-Yahoo hideout in Benue, Nigeria––Internet scammers. The integrity of the tech carrier, Yahoo, is so water-down, waned, and bastardized in Nollywood, Nigerian, and the world vocabulary, that is now a synonym for mean and roguish behavior.