By Ben Adenle

Mo Abudu’s EbonyLife TV prunes its own vine with Nollywood’s first Netlix Original, which relays exactly, the advantage that streaming services were created to afford. Blood Sisters, the Africa-seated piece that became top ten rated in over 30 countries within the first week of release, is a respectable presentation from a perspective that departs from the deeply-rooted western culture – well knitted African tradition and civilization. It offers yet another wave to Netflix’s expansionist and exploratory viewports of our world through diversified storytelling.

Blood Sister, a four-part series, is a perfect bite-sized binge offering with a running time of under four hours. The film is a slow burn but you get quickly unfolded into the worlds of its characters by way of dialogue rather than action. Once settled in with the initial flux of ideas around the centrality of the character set, you are thrown into the adventure of mystery, climax and anti-climaxes that make the show stickily.

Plot-wise, Sarah (Ini Dima-Okojie) and Kemi (Nancy Isime) are two best friends on the run after Kemi accidental shot Sarah’s powerful pharmaceutical CEO fiancé Kola (Deyemi Okanlawon) to save her life-long friend from being strangulated by Kola. As Sarah and Kemi go deeper into the sordid underbelly of Lagos and start to lose more and more of themselves, they are chased on all sides by the law, Kola’s affluent family, and some other interested parties.

The first episode opens with a somewhat confusing plot – a gregarious wedding party, highlighting the Nigerian culture of ostentatious affluence as often explored by most EbonyLife TV’s big hits. One would prejudicially summarize the show to be the stereotypical story of Nigeria’s social dichotomy and classism. But in a rapid twist that characterize the entire film, it goes on to explore the themes of domestic violence, sexual assault, and female empowerment – topics often ignored in Nigerian films and television.

The voyage in Blood Sisters is exhilarating. You’ll get sucked in from the first episode. The following two episodes are slower-paced, focusing more on character development and backstory than on plot. It goes on to establish a thick network of individuals whose familial, platonic, and romantic ties appear to have grown naturally out of this tight-knit society, with an interesting play of sharp conundrums. We find ourselves laughing at an impromptu dinner speech one second and shuddering at spousal abuse the next in the early scenes. The goal is to quickly and vividly weave together a drapery of viewpoints and characters that all serve to inform even more mystery.

Blood Sisters has a fantastic cast and gorgeous visuals. There are numerous breathtaking vistas of Lagos throughout the film, which has stunning cinematography. For one, you get not to see the rife sight and sound of highbrow areas of Lagos, it detours to explore the views of its ghetto and suburbs so well that you quickly appreciate the literal size of Africa’s most populous city. For those who know Nollywood so well, it’s rather appalling that her biggest actors got rather unusual roles, even ‘waka pass’ (single scene unimportant feature) in some cases. Imagine a big A-lister like Toyin Aimakhu doing a 2-minutes feature and legendary Ramsey Noah shadowing in a body guard role! Unbelievable spend of the best of Nollywood all the down. Even more outrageous is the end of the fourth episode, where most of the cast have been exhausted and one is left to wonder what else is there to see in future episodes. That’s the height of suspense.
Co-directed by two of Nollywood’s most experienced directors, Bibandele and Kenneth Gyang, Blood Sisters did justice to character assembly and theme explication. Bandere’s first two episodes established a central figure, fueled incidents and plight, aptly setting the plot for Gyang’s last two episodes, which amplified the variables of the crisis, broke the attention into subplots and ended with a resolution of the ambiguities.

Highlights

Sarah and Kemi’s brawl with Uncle B in a shanty, hijacking of Denrele’s car and vicious trip to Epe area of Lagos. Filled with lots of feather-weight actions and beautiful sprinkle of ‘Sisromance’. The story comes home each time Kemi drops the pidgin lines and one but can appreciate the exquisiteness of diversity and the auspicious mutability of language and culture.

Timeyin (Genoveva Umeh) was a great spotlight. Her time at the rehab, pulsating scuttles with fellow degenerates, stack-naked bath time (alien to Nollywood style), stint of the Prison Break shenanigans, were all on a high.

Lowlights

As with most Nollywood’s attempt at actioners, the choreographic delivery of the fight and tussle scenes still fell below international standards. One is quickly awakened to the fact that this is after all, a movie and this is Nollywood! In modern film production the audience is often teleported to the plot and engaged in total derealization. This wasn’t it for Blood Sisters.

Verdict (4.1)

Blood Sisters is arguably Nollywood’s best so far in terms of casting, cinematography, directing, screenwriting and general production quality. It seems to advance the success of Blood and Waters, South African teen crime drama television series developed by Gambit Films for Netflix, that was a global hit in 2020. Blood Sister is a further statement that African series have come to corner competitive space in the global hunt for variant storytelling and cultural bilocation.

Blood Sisters Review

4.1 Reviewer

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Theme4

Screenwriting4

Visual Design4

Cinematography4.5

Editing4

Sound and Music4

Acting4

Directing4

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• Theme
• Screenwriting
• Visual Design
• Cinematography
• Editing
• Sound and Music
• Acting
• Directing