From the first scene of this movie, I was like, ‘What in the name of Freddy Krueger is going on?!!’
If you attended boarding school in the '90s and early 2000s, you'd have heard the story of Madam KoiKoi, Bush Baby, and the rest of them. These stories were so chilling; they were enough to put the fear of God into erring students.
Still, I can’t say that The Origin: Madam Koi-Koi did justice to the exciting story of Madam KoiKoi.
Legend had it that Madam KoiKoi was a very beautiful teacher, a proper lady who was always in red heels, a red handbag, and red lipstick.
However, Madam KoiKoi was not a serial killer. She just scared students shitless!
This movie portrayed her as a blood-sucking monster who resembled Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
If the producers of The Origin: Madam Koi-Koi didn’t put the premise of Madam KoiKoi on it, it would have gone a long way as a horror movie that was on loosely based on a true-life story.
Producers can get away with anything with the word ‘loosely.’ But they wanted to appeal to the sentimental, nostalgic reminiscences of millennials. It would have worked, though, if only they did a little more research and didn’t try to shove the ‘Babalawo’ thing down our throats.
And what’s with the red light???
The Origin: Madam Koi-Koi was an interesting movie featuring highly professional acts.
Everybody took the production seriously, and the period costumes were also very apt. However, I just have a problem with Bolaji Ogunmola’s costume as she looked too well dressed for a struggling middle-aged single mother.
Jude Chukwuka can never do wrong in my eyes. An Igbo man who speaks Yoruba as fluently as a villager? Me likey!
Ireti Doyle is as classy as classy can be. Still, I wanted to smack her across the face! Chioma Akpotha is a darling; Deyemi is a boss doing Deyemi things; Omowunmi Dada always kills any role she is given. Baaj Adebule, well… he kinda of looks like a pedophile..
Other cast members include newcomers Martha Ehinome, Nene Aliemeke, Chuks Joseph, Kevin Solomon, Iremide Adeoye, EJiro Onojiafe, Tessy Brown, and Tolulope Odebunmi as the scary looking sidekick Ige. That guy gave me the creeps…
That said, let’s get to the story.
The year is 1991, and Amanda reluctantly follows her mother to a school in Malomo. She makes friends with her bunkmate Edna, who shows her around and tells her to stay away from a group of boys because it never ends well for any girl who is close to them.
These boys gang-rape another girl, Ibukun, and they cleverly evade punishment by the Mother Superior, who will do anything to look the other way and manipulate anybody and everybody as long as she gets to keep the school away from the Board of Education, who wants to take over.
Amanda’s life in the school is not easy. She keeps having terrible nightmares of a red light and a hideous monster who just wants to kill and kill.
Meanwhile, the police keep discovering new dead bodies every day along a bush path, and the old janitor of the school is trying to link present events to what happened 20 years ago involving the brutal rape and murder of a teacher who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time; and most importantly, the circumstances of Amanda’s birth.
The iniquities of the father visited on the child…
