God Calling

The gift nollywood gave me for Christmas last year was the shot in the GIF below. That was not a fall. That was not an act. That was a dance! That singular scene negated so much concern and disbelief I had for the industry in six small seconds. Thank you BB Sasore. Thank you Zainab.

God Calling is a faith-based drama about a well-off young lady, Sade, who lives in Lagos with her husband and daughter. Like everyone else around her she has her problems but she also has her blessings. Unlike those around her though, she doesn’t share this belief in “God” and/or “Christianity”. She believes that church and the concept of it is just an elaborate ploy by some to scheme money off of others. All this is true until God begins to call her. Her previously ‘perfect’ life slowly begins to crumble around her after an incident, and she is faced with the question of answering or ignoring God’s call.

It is quite a sight to see how much nollywood has grown in faith-based story-telling over the years. Many attribute religious movies with a constant message knocking over your head of “hell is real” and “give your life to Christ today”. God Calling is not much different from that. Being faith-based, it is still very preachy in some parts. But those parts barely total up to 20% of the film. For the most part it’s a story first before it’s a sermon. It’s a story about a family unit that evolves many times through its 120 minute runtime into different stories without ever skipping a beat or seeming overly obvious. It starts off about Sade’s agnosticism, it evolves to a story of loss and coping, it then confuses you a bit when it becomes about Frances and his doubt – you see the preachy part here as the writer covertly draws a parallel between the one-leg-in Christianity of Frances and the Christianity practiced by many of us; it then evolves into a bit about tribe tensions, family relations, and so much more. All while still being the story of Sade. So props to the writer for such focused storytelling.

We cannot talk about the storytelling without mentioning the tools that bring it to fruition. This is possibly my first time noticing Karibi Fubara and what an empty life I’ve lived till now. Somehow Kabiri manages to never get overshadowed by the strength of Zainab’s performance and also never compete with her. Her character was raw and his character was strong and even though his character evolved through the story he maintained the essence of it and bringing that across the screen is no small feat. From Onyeka Onwenu to RMD to Osuofia and Tina Mba and even the beautiful young lady who plays the daughter (Diana Egwuatu), the supporting cast of this movie is not here to play with you. There are no distractions from actors whose skills are still buffering. Each actor brought the required intensity and executed appropriately.

And then there was Zainab. If you’ve ever seen a review for a movie where we describe a performance from an actor as “fair enough” or “not quite there”, and you wondered what was missing? Then watch Zainab in “God Calling”. Watch her and find out how to leave your soul on the screen, how to pour your heart on the floor, how to expose your spirit in film. How to… act. From the trailer I thought the bridge scene was my favorite, after seeing the movie the church memorial scene takes the cake.

“Zainab is dancing on y’all in 2018 and she’s taking no prisoners!”

– See “The Actors That Won 2018”

The movie, though, was not without its flaws. Asides from the unavoidable preachiness, there was the questionable audio that plagued the entire thing. From dialogues that were overpowered by music and silence alike to dubbed audio that was the opposite of fluid, clearly the audio department was suffering some technical devil-culties. But that’s where the technical difficulties end. This film had some of the best CGI we’ve seen from a nollywood movie ever and much improved from the director’s previous work in “Banana Island Ghost”. It was far from seamless, especially the fire scene and the background for that final scene, but neither was it glaring or difficult to watch. Like his previous work, here too we get to witness a little bit more of BB Sasore’s love affair with the water and we might actually be falling in love with it right along with him.

All in all, if dramas are your thing then God might be calling you to watch God Calling.