There may be talk of A Song from the Dark exploring Nigerian mysticism. Yet one can’t help but wonder just how authentic the representation has been.
By Victory Hayzard Solum
Magnus Williams (Wale Ojo), a migrant politician and beloved philanthropist, ends his life in a gruesome suicide in England. Soon afterward, his dysfunctional family members find themselves marked with festering scars. This leads them to question his suicide, convinced that they are being targeted by forces from Williams’ village back in Nigeria. To combat this, they turn to Ashionye (Vanessa Vanderpuye), a reluctant and starving exorcist who also happens to be their disgruntled former domestic help, in the setup of Ogo Okpue’s horror feature, A Song from the Dark.
Okpue is a British-Nigerian director and motion graphics designer whose short films, Saving Cain (2013) and Cat Face (2016) have been screened at various international film festivals. His work in A Song from the Dark has garnered some recognition, too, winning ‘Best Director’ at the American Black Film Festival and ‘Best New Feature’ at the Pan African Film Festival. This debut feature of his is an ode to his Nigerian heritage, seeking to increase African representation in global cinema. It features performances from Nigerian actors like Ojo and Nse Ikpe-Etim, as well as a British-Ghanaian lead, Vanderpuye.
A Song from the Dark has an interesting story to tell. At its heart is an unsettled family with a dark secret, weaving a narrative thread about the sins of the father. As horror stories often give vent to social ills and anxieties, this film highlights the treatment of illegal migrant domestic help as its particular boil to lance. Instead of traditional Catholic iconography typical of exorcist cinema, the film opts for symbols of Nigerian mysticism. Despite these intriguing ingredients, A Song from the Dark bears all the telling hallmarks of a novice at work.
A strange mirror scar appears suddenly on the arms of its characters. Yet, for all its oddness, there is no ticking clock element to the undertaking. With no evident anxiety or eagerness to get rid of the scars as soon as possible, and its sufferers conversing with lavish smiles, one is left wondering if the problem is serious after all.
There is some lazy surface-level spat indicating a supposed clash between logic and belief in the supernatural. Without any serious philosophical investigation following it, however, one can see this is there solely because one expects it in this sort of film. Perhaps most telling about these beginner issues is the film’s voiceover narration. It is one peculiar stream that goes on forever and could have used some editing and pruning for all its aimlessness and repetitiveness.
There is talk of A Song from the Dark exploring Nigerian mysticism, yet one can’t help but wonder just how authentic the representation has been. For one, the film falls prey to the sort of mindset that sees Africa treated as one country, or in this case, conceives of such a thing as “Nigerian mysticism”. As opposed to the homogeneous mythologies and traditions of Christendom in Europe, Nigeria is home to multitudinous peoples and tribes, each with their own distinct conduits of spirituality.
Thus, the odds of one tiny handwritten book zeroing in on exact deities in circumstances as peculiar as the film’s require coincidences of a magnitude not adequately justified by the film. Simply put, Ashionye’s language and mythology appear Igboid. Imagine if she had to deal with a spirit of Magnus Williams’ Yoruba origins. By not locking its characters in a single culture of reference, the film opens itself up to an interesting intersectionality that could have greatly enriched its universe, if only its creators had been savvy enough to realise it. And yet, that’s not all.
A Song from the Dark gives us a book of spells. But where is all the cowrie or shell casting of Afa the Igbo divination system? Everywhere one turns in this movie, there is turmeric blowing in the wind, but nothing of the native chalk markings in sight. What one is left with is a product that is Nigerian in name, feels very New Agey, but is rather indistinguishable from the already existing catalogue of sorcery movies in the Western tradition.
It is a fundamental principle of storytelling that the hero’s journey be filled with significant impediments and failures prior to the big triumph. Yet, there has to be something distasteful about an ineffectual hero with nary a successful strike on record. A Song from the Dark hopes to sell its hero, Ashionye, as some formidable warrior against ancient darkness, but all evidence points in the opposite direction. The charge of charlatanry is not one she can escape easily. Ashionye seems to know just two spells.
One of them she employs ninety percent of the time, to absolutely zero effect. The other one, she is expressly forbidden from using, and yet when she turns upon it in battle, it turns out to be a dud anyway. All she does is stand there weeping and bathing in turmeric while an entire family gets slaughtered before her. A more honest summation of this film would be that of a charlatan’s rise from being a fraud to a maybe-sorcerer.
Perhaps, the truth is A Song from the Dark has been marketed in the wrong genre. The tears-to-fears ratio is so imbalanced as to place it in the realm of the melodrama, despite its insistence on spirits and jump scares that neither scare nor induce any jumps. But perhaps, in this, the film is very much like its protagonist: loudly advertised, but performing so poorly as to induce ponderous head scratches.
What one can’t deny, however, is that everyone on board engages their craft with a measure of seriousness that is at least commendable, if unsuccessful. The actors want to do good work, and the editing is working overtime on steroids. One may fall seventy percent short of a thousand-mile journey, and yet, with the right attitude, beat one’s chest and say, “I’ve tried”. This film is sure to find its champions amongst those looking to buy “Nigerian”. But all others seeking horror for its own sake had better look elsewhere.
Rating: 1.5/5
(A Song from the Dark is currently streaming on Prime)
Victory Hayzard Solum is a freelance writer with an irrepressible passion for the cinematic arts. Here he explores the sights, sounds, and magic of the shadow-making medium and their enrichment of the human experience. A longstanding ghostwriter, he may have authored the last bestselling novel you read.