Story: Bode Alao Festus

Director: Bode Alao Festus

Screenplay: Tai Emeka Obasi

Secret of the Mind

Patience Ozokwor – Flora

Mike Ezuruonye – Mike

Caroline Ekanem – Nancy

Desmond Elliot – David

Vitalis Ndubuisi – Chief Andy Richards

Emilia Azuh – Clara

Charles Inojie – Man Charlie

Kelechi Koko – Mercy

Themes explored in the film

Religion

Good Vs Evil

Importance of status in Nigerian society

My Rating 67%

David is a First Class student on campus from a poor background. Nancy is his girlfriend. She is not as academically capable but is from a rich connected family, which means that upon graduation she is more likely to be hired than David, despite being obviously less able.

David tells Nancy in trying to explain his position,

“Now what your father has is a social first class. What I have is a paper first class. They are two different things. What matters in this country is a social first class. I don’t have that.”

9 months after graduation David is unemployed. It is only when Nancy’s father writes a letter of recommendation for him to a bank that he gains employment. It is as though David is cursed as his employment joy is short lived.

The initial introduction of the supernatural was highly confusing. We see his mother flit from this life to the afterlife. We are introduced to her supernatural caped sons called HUNGER and FUSTRATION, whose task is to prevent David from getting a job. The reasons why are not made immediately clear.

David too cannot understand the reasoning behind his continual bad luck. He meets a church sister called Nancy who upon shaking his hand for the first time tells him that he is covered in chains and referred to him as being,

“decimated by ancestral spirits.”

As they get too know each other further she tells him more than once,

“You have eyes, but you can’t see”

If you have not watched you may want to stop reading here

***SPOILERS***

David Mother is dabbling in the occult and has been warned that she will die if she does not make sure that her son dies within a certain time frame. That time frame elapses and his survival is the root of his bad luck. This fact is only made clear towards the end of the film. We are also told that she killed her husband and two others. She has been trying to kill David since he was 5 without success. It would appear that David was not meant to die young.

MAN CHARLIE

There was a character called Man Charlie. Nancy hooks David up with an apartment and one of the neighbours called Man Charlie keeps coming around uninvited. He was a comical character that is for sure, but what was his significance within the film? If you know let me know because that one baffled me!

SOUNDTRACK

I appreciated the use of music in the film. It was used to build and decrease tension without being loud and overbearing as is often the case in Nollywood

MESSAGE

At the end there is a fight with the the evil spirits vs Mercy and the Pastor. The spirits are inhabited within David and they fight to rid him of them eventually overcoming them, with many screams of HOLY GHOST FI-YA!

The message in the story is to stay away from the occult as it is a force so powerful that it will even kill a mother’s love for her son.

This is one of those films that you may have to watch twice to get. I would recommend it because it was certainly DIFFERENT!