So everybody knows that I'm not a fan of nollywood movies, but I don't know how my partner was able to drag me to watch Blood sisters, so I didn't get to see it from the first part , but the second part had explanatory flash backs of the first one, so I was fine not watching the first one cos I understood what the movie was about .
And that how I got hooked by this "Blood sisters", and also because of the familiar faces in the characters, I guess maybe that's why I don't like watching nollywood,I don't know, so there I was, half paying attention because I already made up my mind that I was not going to enjoy it, but then somehow, just an hour in, I was the one asking my partner "wait wait wait, so who killed who again?" You see the small irony there, abi?
This Blood Sisters story follows Sarah, a bride to be who's about to marry into serious money, and her best friend Kemi, who's been carrying trauma from an abusive past relationship, On the night before the wedding, something goes horribly wrong the groom ends up dead, and instead of doing the sensible thing (calling the police, explaining themselves, anything), the girls decide to run, they cut the body in pieces , took it to a dumpster and trashed it, And that's really where the whole movie picks me up by the collar and refuses to let go, because now you are not watching a wedding movie anymore, you are watching two women try to outrun a decision they made in five minutes of panic.
What got me wasn't even the plot twists, though there were plenty. It was how human the fear felt, You know that thing where one bad choice snowballs because nobody wants to be the one to say "let's stop and think"?
So this second part had to do with the fact that they were caught and were taken to trial, these women though remorseful about their actions, they weren't just about to be left Scot free, especially with the Mother of the groom character in their back standing to see that they are really in fact punished, and this role is played by Kate Henshaw, she is a fierce character in this movie. She has her own kind of personality which I admired throughout the movie, though she was like the villain in the whole movie.
Now, let me be fair to my usual complaints about Nollywood, because I still have them, some of the dialogue felt like it was reaching for a drama that wasn't quite earned yet, and there's a particular scence that had me raising one eyebrow, not gonna lie. Nigerian film still has this thing where emotion gets performed a little louder than it needs to be, where a raised voice does the work that silence would've done better. I noticed it, I won't say that I didn't.
But somehow it didn't kill the show for me the way it usually does with other Nollywood projects, maybe because the writing underneath the performances was strong enough to survive it, and honestly, the familiar faces helped, watching actors I've seen in a dozen other things step into completely different energy, that was interesting to me, It made me wonder if my problem was never really with Nollywood as an industry, but with lazy writing dressed up in familiar faces.
Blood Sisters didn't feel lazy, It felt like people who actually sat down and asked "what would somebody really do if their whole life was about to collapse because of one mistake?" and then had the guts to let the answer be ugly, There's a particular tension between Kemi and her abuser that runs through the whole movies, and I appreciated that the show didn't rush to redeem him just to give the audience a neat closure, some men don't change, some situations don't heal clean, and I liked that the writers respected that instead of tying a bow on trauma for the sake of a happy ending, that's not something I expected walking in.
And so when we reached the end of the movie, I wasn't the unwilling person that my partner dragged to the couch to watch, I was completely invested, gasping at betrayals, side eyeing characters I trusted some scenes ago, and that's what a great thriller is all about, right? It doesn't narrate a story, it makes you a part of the anxiety.
So am I going back on everything I have said before about Nollywood? Hmm , No, not yet, there's a bit more to do o their part, but Blood Sisters has me saying something I never thought that I would say, Nollywood can easily compete with anything I do watch when it's good and when the characters aren't just actors on a pedestal to cry for the camera.
Perhaps my boyfriend was well aware of what he was doing before he got me to that couch that day to watch ,I just won't tell him that.
Rating: 70/100
