93 Days

One big question we ask when reviewing cinema releases is “can this movie stand on its own when surrounded by movies from Iran, America, France, Great Britain, India, etc?” or is it just “good… for a nollywood movie?”. With 93 Days, for the first time in almost ever, the answer a solid Yes!

93 Days chronicles the moments following the arrival of the first Ebola case in Nigeria – Patrick Sawyer – as he lands at Murtala Muhammed International Airport and heads to First Consultant Hospital for treatment of his symptoms. It takes us through the intuition and bravery of the doctors and staff at said hospital, and all the way through how this one case affects the Ebola outbreak for the city, the country and the world.

We always scream about movies cutting corners to make a ‘good-enough’ film. However, you only truly realize the extent of the corners cut when you see what not cutting corners looks like. For the first half of this movie, I used up a good portion of my brain just being in awe of Steve Gukas. In awe of the resilience it takes to ignore any nay-sayers who might have said, this shot is good enough, this prop will suffice, that scene is fair enough, those lines will do after-all Nigerians don’t know any better. They don’t know what PPE is, they don’t care about the effort you’ve made in researching your subject and creating a believable medical atmosphere. But hats off to Steve Gukas for deafening those noises and going ahead to make an incredible film.

The second half of the movie was an intense experience that truly unleashes the tears. In the second half, we follow how this virus attacks each of the members of the hospital’s team and how each of them individually fight for survival. It’s this part that truly separates the wheat from the chaff, and there was not a single chaff in sight. Each actor in this movie came into the field swinging and came out to bat. It was never a case of needing music and cinematography to cover up inadequacies, instead the music and cinematography only served to heighten already amazing performances.

It would be utterly foul of me though to mention performances without singling out this specific actor. Don’t get me wrong, everyone from Bassey to Akintola, from Manuel to Okeke and all in between were exceptional. However, this was possibly the first film where Somkele really made me pause. The scene where she breaks down after a death in the Ebola ward was the first moment that it occurred to me that she was an actor. It might seem like an insulting thing to say but this is nollywood and we have made multiple movies where none of the people on screen are actors. I had thought of her as stunning, as enigmatic even, but never really thought of her as an actress till then. The way she breaks down. The way she controls the emotion and still creates the impact. It was a sight.

Even though the second half pales in comparison to the first 50 minutes, the entire movie is still an immersive experience. All in all 93 Days was a movie that gave us all a lot of pride to watch based on an event that could have quickly gone awry. It has possibly the best nollywood movie villain, in Ebola, and definitely one of the better executions we have seen in a long while.