- Directed by Jean Luc Herbulot
- Written by Jean Luc Herbulot, Pamela Diop
- Stars Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tth-ZMqZMkM
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Great acting, great story, beautiful cinematography. It doesn’t make Africa look like a fun place to live or visit, at least in the parts they show us here, but it was a treat seeing it. African horror movies actually made by Africans with a mostly African cast are a rarity, and this one is a gem worth viewing for sure.
Synopsis
“We say that revenge is like a river whose bottom is reached only when we drown.”
We begin in Guinea-Bissau in 2003. A large number of soldiers and civilians are killed by men who leave calling cards all over the place. Their pledge to restore order looks like bloodshed, but they’re working against the drug trade. The main trio are guns for hire, with another guy pulled along. There’s lots of shooting as the men take their gold payment and fly away. We move to Barre, Gambia, where something goes wrong with the men’s plane. They make for Saloum, Senegal instead of Dakar, where they were supposed to drop Felix off. Credits roll.
After landing the plane in the desert, the men bury their gold and make a note with the GPS coordinates. The men figure out their plane was sabotaged before they even took off. It’s an eight-hour walk to get repair stuff and more fuel. At one point in their journey, Chaka is given a drug to knock him out, and he has a nightmare. Turns out, he’s afraid to ride in a boat because of an extreme water phobia and had to be sedated for the journey.
They come to the Baobob, a place where people will forget about them if they stay a few days. The motel there suddenly has two open rooms, so they stay there. There are no charges for food and drink and lodging, but it’s a place where everyone has to do fieldwork or chores daily to pay. White-hair-man, Papa Minuit, is a sort of shaman, who puts white-beard-man, Rafa, into a trance and says there are eyes upon them.
At dinner that night, the four men meet Youce and Sephora, a pair of artists who are also visiting the region. Awa the deaf mute is another guest, and Salamane is Omar the host’s assistant. Chaka doesn’t take his gloves off at dinner; he’s quite strange. We see that Awa can read lips, and she knows quite a bit about them already. The trio know sign language, and at dinner, she says she’s coming with them going forward– or she’s going to expose them. Felix doesn’t speak the language, so he just follows along with the others. Captain Souleymane of the police arrives, and the party breaks up.
The next morning, they are all assigned chores. Rafa and Awa are out on a boat, and she knows a lot more about the trio of men than she let on last night. They are heroes in her eyes. As Papa Minuit delivers goods to the town, we see someone running around behind him. Chaka and Omar go out with guns to stop fishing poachers. Felix ends up planting mangroves in the field, but Souleymane says that he knows that the cartel has put a price on Felix’s head. He’s a smart guy, who puts together who the trio are, and he wants Felix to help keep them distracted so he can bring in cops to deal with them. Or else.
We get several blurry, dreamlike shots of people chained up in a barn. It’s some kind of vision that Chaka has of his own childhood. Later, at dinner, he accuses Omar of hurting the child in his dreams. Omar admits it, and Chaka kills him. Omar kept Chaka as a child slave years ago, and he escaped. Captain Souleymane calls for backup, but Chaka already paid off the cops to leave – he was on to him all the time. Souleymane is on his own. Minuit and Rafa accuse Chaka of bringing them here on purpose. This was all planned.
The next morning, the skies are full of flying insects, and Felix has seizures and dies. Minuit says that it’s spirits; no man could have done this to Felix. Salamane the assistant says that Omar was the guardian; “You killed the only barrier between them and us. They’re coming to take us, one by one. You killed his ferryman!” It’s the curse of Gana Sira Bana. To avoid hearing them, you have to cover your ears or else they will take you.
Chaka goes outside and is attacked by the smoke monster; he’s soon rescued by Awa. The living clumps can be slashed or shot, which breaks them up temporarily. The house is surrounded by the cloud, but they all put on headphones to protect them from hearing the creature. Chaka and the Captain find a bunch of children, all chained up like Chaka was as a child; they release the kids. Salamane says that Omar was sacrificing them to the thing to keep it appeased. Salamane and Souleymane are both killed by the creature; so are Youce and Sephora.
Chaka and Rafe find Minuit in a meditation pose; he says he is holding the creature at bay, but he won’t last for much longer. The two younger men then shoot Minuit dead. The monster dissipates, but not for long.
To escape, they have to get in a boat, which terrifies Chaka. Awa keeps him distracted while Rafa rows the boat. The monster attacks, pulling Chaka out of the boat and drowning him.
Rafa and Awa row on with the fuel and repair parts for the airplane as the monster dissolves.
Commentary
Africa doesn’t look like a very fun place to visit, even before the monster shows up.
I would love to have a suitcase with an almost-Spectre, almost-Hydra logo on the side. Very cool!
The weird swarm creature is well done and interesting. Kind of cohesive clouds of insects. It seems an awful lot like the smoke-monster from “Lost.”
It’s a good story of a complex revenge plot and a surprise monster that no one expected.