Something Wicked

Something Wicked was one very aspirational thriller. It is about a widow named Hauwa and her family who suddenly take on a new family member named Abel, and then strange things begin to happen around them.

Abel is Hauwa’s nephew who has come from the North after loosing his parents due to the violence up North. Upon his arrival, the family members take him in and we see how their lives continue to unfold. Slowly, things begin to change and take a turn for the weird around them.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

It would be disrespectful to not give the director props for what he does. 75% of the time his tactics are efficient. The shots that are supposed to carry the tension, do so magnificently. My favorite of these shots would have to be the shots of Abel’s eyes when he wakes up mid-sleep. I almost felt like his eyes deserved a special listing on the credits. Then there were the other 25% of the times that the tactics fell short. It’s in the scene where Claudia walks in to the kitchen with an envelope in her hand and tries to be ominous, or the scene where Abel forces his way into Becca’s room. These scenes were cliche and unapologetically predictable.

The cast of this movie is possibly the best thing it had going for it. Hats off to whoever decided to cast Adesua against type in the comic relief role, and bigger props to Adesua for rising to the challenge. Her comic timing was magnificent in this and she really did have me literally laughing out loud. I loved the addition of a mute character and the dynamics it added to the family, and Ivie brought a certain childlike innocence to that role that is unarguable. Okey also finds a fine balance between his intensity and calm, however, he could definitely have done better being a more convincing and intimidating villain – we got to some point in the movie where I thought to myself “okay e do! Just go ahead and kill everybody so that it can be done with”.

From the poster to the music to the title of the movie and the directing style, from the start you already know what effect the movie is going for. Once Abel arrives at the house, all of your spidey-senses begin to tingle to tell you that “Hey! This guy is our ‘something wicked'”. I guess you can say that this movie was not predictable in the sense that you expect the resolution to be something more than the obvious but then it ends up being just the obvious.

As we enter the final sequence of this movie and Claudia goes home to seduce Abel, you are still hoping within you that Abel isn’t the bad guy and that the writers are going to flip the script on us. However, as one character after the other begins to die off you actually find yourself wishing that the writer pulls off the ultimate film making cop-out of all time – aka the “it was all a dream” effect. But since you are a reasonable human being and you think that these days no decent writer would write an end like that , you assume that they are going to end this on some Shakespeare ish where ‘everybody dies’ and fully embrace their ridiculousness. But no! Lo’ and behold, they instead take the cop-out route.

Regardless of the grand ridiculousness of the ending and the many unoriginal aspects of this film’s storytelling and directing, it never becomes a bore at any point. This is owing in large part to the actors that carry the movie as well as the director who is intentionally and actively telling the story with his camera lens.