by Wilfred Okiche

 

It is entirely possible that during the year under review, films more odious than the 10 duds that landed on this list were released. But those unseen stinkers had the good sense to be directed squarely at their target audience. These calamitous ten made the unfortunate decision of attempting to play widely to a crossover audience in big screens across the country and were promptly regurgitated as fast as they were swallowed up.

Some directors like Elvis Chuks managed to make 2 successive flops in a short period of time while the Ghanaians strolled in with 2 separate entries. Usual suspects, Rukky Sanda and Juliet Ibrahim are represented as they should be, but it was the release of Steve Gukas’ big budget follow up to his well-received, Keeping faith that surprised even the most patient of audiences with the depth of its disappointment.

For some of these filmmakers, we say, no more please.

These are the 10 worst films of the year. In ascending order.

1. A Place in the stars

If one had predicted at this time last year, that A Place in the stars would turn out to be such a dismal failure, that person could have been stoned to death for blasphemy. Steve Gukas who made Keeping faith in 2002 had the pedigree and talent to inspire competence in his output. The film when it arrived instead, landed with a thud. Heavy handed, deathly dull and surprisingly bereft of ideas, A Place in the stars did not even attempt to aim for the skies at all.

9. Invasion 1897

Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen’s long awaited Invasion 1897 turned out to be a good-intentioned mess. In tracing the history of the ancient Benin kingdom and committing the heroics involved in the tragic fall Of Oba Ovonramwen to film, Imasuen took some risks and made a special effects heavy film. However there was nothing really special about the effects and instead of presenting an intimate character study of a distant historical figure, Imasuen’s Oba come across as almost stark raving mad, possessing plenty bark but little bite.

8. Single, married & complicated

Another year, another Yvonne Nelson production, and how we have come to dread them. The mistress of bodacious returns with the sequel to the 2012 hit, Single & married and just like the time before, fails to say anything interesting about the state of modern relationships. Instead she chooses to vamp up the screen with overdone clips of her gorgeous anatomy, unsexy frolicking and all too familiar plot lines.

7. One night in Vegas

In this Nollywood USA effort produced by Jimmy Jean-Louis (the Haitian from the NBC television series, Heroes), there are scenes of confrontation, screaming matches, and some action going on, but the film is about as interesting as watching a candle light flicker out. Everything screams low budget but that is no excuse for the silly script; a mishmash of modern clichés, inane plot twists and terrible dialogue. Picture quality is home video style and the action sequences are barely passable. The performers are instantly defeated. Nothing here excites them. Nothing here excites us.

6. Deep inside

Lancelot Oduwa-Imasuen makes another entry with Deep inside, a setup- starring Omoni Oboli and Uti Nwachukwu- that tries to be a romantic comedy but lacks any hint of either element. The whole film is shoddily put together, roughly cut and tackily edited. Continuity is awful and the film feels like a big lumbering animal; ungraceful and careless. Sound is bad and most of the supporting cast is either overacting or not acting at all. There is hardly any direction at all and everyone appears left to their own devices

5. Devil in a dress

Devil in a dress suffers from the script’s looseness and the director, Pascal Amanfo does not understand subtlety, neither does he grasp the finer details of the story he is telling. Directing for him, must mean putting actors in front of a screen just to have them read their lines as he gallops from scene to scene. Badly acted and roughly plotted, even when the story is engaging enough, the sheer mediocrity of the production may turn off intending audiences.

4. Number one fan

What is worse than watching Ghanaian actress Juliet Ibrahim emote on screen? There are probably a few things that come to mind but watching Ms Ibrahim’s younger sister, Sonia pretend to be an actor, in one of the most horrid cases of nepotism in the film business, has to rank high up there. Her self-produced Number one fan, is a schlocky, badly produced effort that stings with each passing minute. You will do well to avoid.

3. I come Lagos

In Elvis Chuk’s latest flop, there is nothing to write home about. The film is grating and gets on the viewers’ every last nerve. Nse IKpe-Etim who is usually a formidable screen presence is a shadow of her screen self and almost damages every modicum of credibility she has amassed by agreeing to carry this mess. She sports an engaging, native Ibibio accent but that is about the only positive visible on screen. Her role is a cliché, her performance, a caricature. She is stranded with an odious script and terrible actors to play off against.

2. Gold diggin’

The first half of Gold diggin’, Rukky Sanda’s latest, plays like an extended music video. There is a huge disconnect with the second half and the film feels like a series of stills cobbled together to make an unwholesome whole. The screenplay is bland and has only a few decent lines of dialogue going for it. Sanda’s direction is 90’s home video style and the background music/soundtrack insists on narrating the whole film. As a producer and maybe even director, Rukky Sanda showed some promise with 2013’s Keeping my man, but this one takes her 10 steps back.

1. Honeymoon hotel

The lighting for the Elvis Chuks-directed Honeymoon hotel is incredibly bad, sound is iffy, the story is uninteresting and screenplay shoddy. It is a wonder how this film got made at all. Thankfully, just when you are about to give up, the whole thing ends. But you do not leave the hall feeling like you just sat through a movie, the impression is that you just saw a trailer for an upcoming movie. An inert, boring and seemingly endless trailer.

The writer tweets from @drwill20