Jerry Ossai’s Interpretation of Madam Koi-Koi Legend is Limiting and Troubling

Jerry Ossai’s Ms. Kanyin arrived on Prime Video with no fanfare heralding its presence. However, when its trailer was released three days prior to release date, it caused  little but significant ripple and conversation. Ossai’s touted supernatural thriller is an addition to the growing list of Nigerian films that pays homage to decades-long legends and myths of Madam Koi Koi. Jay Franklyn Jituboh’s Madam Koi-Koi, streaming on Netflix, recently brought to contemporary audience attention a cinematic representation of the story of the vengeful titular spirit that stalks isolated hostels, scares and inflicts corporal punishment on boarding school students. Set in a boarding school Sterling Academy, Ossai’s Ms. Kanyin presents a different spin into the Madam Koi Koi legend.

Fragmentarily retaining elements of these myths in his interpretation of the Madam Koi Koi story, the story is set in a seemingly elitist boarding school, located in an isolated community, and having young adults as cast members. In Ossai’s version, when the story starts, the vengeful spirit isn’t particularly domiciled in the school premises. It has been resting for centuries in a mysterious tree that the villagers, aware of its danger,  had abandoned with the advent of modernity. At the centre of the story are Amara (Temi Otedola), a brilliant and ambitious student pinning for acceptance into Harvard, Chisom (Toluwani George), the school’s principal daughter and Amara’s strained friend, Uti (Natse Jemise) a swimmer, Findinte (Kanaga Eme Jnr), the Brigraider General’s son who moves with the ill-advised confidence and knowledge the social approval his parents’ wealth has bought him. Equally important to the story is the titular Miss Kanyin (Michelle Dede), a disciplined French teacher having a brewing romance with Mustapha (Ademola Adedoyin) 

Swerving away from cliched Madam Koi Koi’s story element, the film casually creates an identity for itself by subtly talking about the erasure of culture and fear of the advent of modernity. This is something more sinister, mysterious and culturally resonant to Nigerians that the film pays lip service attention to. Rarely will a Nigerian community not have some supposedly religiously dangerous and evil spot that non-initiated people can’t visit. The commonality of these mysterious spots, sites, trees and similar objects deposited  around Nigerian cities makes it a pivotal angle to interpret the Madam Koi Koi story and present a scary horror and ghost story that’s culturally resonant to Nigerians. Though the film leans into this more in the opening scene, the script fails to steadfastly commit to it. Even when the screenplay invites an elderly man to present a summarized history of the mysterious tree and we see the film’s character  die after awakening the evil resident in the tree, the script doesn’t rise beyond that horrifyingly graphic image. In place of a fine blend of cultural interrogation, introspection of the faux confidence of modernity and visual horror, the script solely decides on the latter. 

Faithful to this angle, the film presents the individual and collective stories of its young adults who made unguided and selfish decisions of cheating the school system and their disciplined French teacher just to be able to score high in their WAEC examination. Their actions set free the entrapped evil spirit resident in the mysterious tree resulting in their deaths. The film allows the young adults, before meeting  fatal ends, to carry the moral burden of their actions. Aesthetically, the film carries the period it’s set in through cinematography that visually states and reiterates its importance.  

In a society with surging and infuriating statistics of domestic violence and sexual harassment, it’s politically inept and insentitive that the film decides to deposit a  harassment scene just for the sake of it. Over the years, Nigerian filmmakers have often approached treating sexual harassment in films casually and with kid gloves. Films like Hey You, and A Young Time Ago, The origin: Madam Koi Koi wear this flaw. These films and series similar to Ossai’s film glossly view sexual harassment of women as  plot fillers and in this lens it adopt societal troubling views of harassment of women as one of those things women experience. Neither with a muffled or clear voice, do these films and series name this harassment as a crime against women. Nigerian filmmakers need to rise above these harmful depictions as a way of presenting a vocal criticism of these violent and criminal acts against women.