Uncloaked

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Uncloaked is a gem hiding in plain sight. In this movie, the writer deals with so much without saying much.

The story is about a young man, Thank God (nope, that’s his actual name), who attempts suicide after loosing his mother. His concerned flatmate calls in the pastor to pray for him and his pastor realizes he might need more help, so he asks his fiance – a psychologist – to take TG up as a patient. It is then that a lot of things begin to surface.

The MVP here is a tie between the writer and the director. The writer because this is uncharted territory in nollywood – for the most part – yet the writer is able to highlight so much without even coming off as preachy. In this one movie, they bring up homosexuality and don’t try to preach you into any direction. This is no ‘gay rights’ movie, neither is it any ‘homosexuality is a sin’ movie. It’s a movie where a character happens to be gay.

I tipped my imaginary hat to the writer in the scene where TG explains his preference for certain types of passengers on his okada. It’s not the content that made that line great, it was the fact that someone thought to write it and that Baaj was able to execute it so perfectly. The story does not preach at you yet it highlights the hypocrisy of society as well as the fallibility of humans. No one is without fault here, be it the pastor who preaches that the Bible is against alcohol consumption (which it really isn’t by the way – it’s against drunkenness but this is not a sermon so I’ll move on) while he is having pre-marital sex with his fiance.

I can’t go into enough detail about how much of a ‘win’ the storyline is but the storyline itself would not have been great without the directing. There are many nollywood movies where we talk too much and things that can be expressed without words are beaten to death with words and explanations. This movie has so many scenes where volumes are spoken without words being used and we credit that one to the director and the editor.

However, this movie would have been nothing without the right actors. Starting with Kelechi Udegbe as the homosexual roommate. In that scene where he is grinding against Baaj, you see exactly why this one actor is going to go places. He has no restraints and does not attempt to hold himself back. Instead he gives everything to the character. I might not have realized it during the movie, but the actor who plays the pastor deserves an award because by the end of the movie even I needed to seek forgiveness from God because of all the hate I was harboring towards him. He does a great job of presenting this conflicted and two-faced man of God that it is inevitable that you leave the movie hating him.

Then there’s our leads – Ijeoma Grace Agu as the psychologist and Baaj Adebule. Ijeoma does a great job of growing her character from start to finish. You see the moments of actual growth where the character is pondering decisions and changing her ways. Then there’s Baaj Adebule. In fact, Baaj was not in this movie – it was ThankGod all the way. He owns the character and does a fantastic job of presenting the conflict within. I’m going to play devil’s advocate here when I say that I wish that he broke a bit more than he did. It’s not that he did not do well as TG, he killed it. However, I feel there were scenes where he could have gone from good to great. Be that as it may the performances in this movie were amazing.

Save for a few technical flaws here and there, Uncloaked really nails the picture of what we hope the future of nollywood looks like – storylines that are different while still being entertaining and engaging.