Bolanle Austen-Peters, the 55-year-old lawyer turned film and theatre producer, delivers yet another compelling narrative with her latest movie, “House of Ga’a.” This film marks a significant departure from her previous projects, diving deep into themes of cultural heritage, family dynamics, and societal expectations. With a keen eye for detail, Austen-Peters crafts a story that is both timeless and timely.

Spoiler Free Summary

“House of Ga’a” revolves around the family of a prominent Oyo warrior who is soon named Bashorun by the Alaafin.

We see Ga’a become power drunk, especially after the title of Bashorun is conferred to him. The Oyomesi (kingmakers) fear him, so they let him do whatever he wants. Ga’a amassed much support rooted in fear, installing and displacing kings at will, keeping taxes and tributes for himself and much more. His ever-growing greed and pride cause him to make reckless decisions till everything he worked hard to build comes crashing down all around him.

Review

The star-studded film meticulously explores themes such as the burden of legacy, the quest for identity, family, love, betrayal, and more.

If there’s anything we were very impressed with in this movie, it was the VFX and SFX. Clearly, no expense was spared!

We’ve seen major improvements in Nollywood’s SFX and VFX, but we have to say that Austen-Peters really knocked this one out of the park. It wasn’t perfect, but it was one of the best we’ve seen recently.

We’d also like to thank her for bringing Yemi Blaq out of hiding—we had missed him on our screens!

House of Ga’a. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

This brings us to other honourable mentions of some of the actors that blew us away: Femi Branch, Jide Oyegbile, Bimbo Manuel, William Benson, Mike Afolarin, Ibrahim Chatta, Dele Odule, Funke Akindele, Temilolu Fosudo, Bridget Nkem, Femi Adebayo, and many more!

We need to circle back to Femi Branch again because he acted like his life depended on it. We’ve always known him to be a fantastic actor, but we saw him in a light we’ve never seen before in this movie. We look forward to seeing him sweep awards for this performance during the award season.

We also doff our hats, especially to Jide Oyegbile, who delivered on his role perfectly and played off so well with Femi Branch

We love that the story unfolds organically, allowing characters to develop and for the audience to engage deeply with their journeys.

The cinematography equally captures vision beautifully, with each frame thoughtfully composed, adding layers of meaning to the narrative.

The set design, costumes, makeup, etc, all instantly transported us to the time of the reign of the Oyo empire as intended. You nearly forget you’re in the 21st century. The entire production team did an amazing job of making the movie seem as real as possible.

The use of language and infusion of certain traditions were also beautiful to watch.

However, a few things left a sour taste in our mouths, especially towards the end.

First of all, the movie was perfectly built up, and we were expecting some sort of mind-blowing revenge in the end from Ga’a’s son, Oyemekun. Not only did he narrate all the way to the end, but he also mentioned how he drastically changed after the love of his life was murdered. We barely got to see that change, and all of the build-up seemed to amount to nothing for him.

Secondly, the initial portrayal of the “Nupe Witch”, Zainab hinted at her possibly having something to do with Ga’a’s inevitable downfall. However, it would seem there was no use to her character as she didn’t particularly have any effect on the overall plot.

We also have a couple of cases of disappearing characters, only for them to return later without a proper explanation.

Granted, these were quite frustrating for us, but everything else was just too good; it made the movie’s shortcomings seem very trivial. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is now showing on Netflix, and we highly encourage you to do so and prepare yourself for a wild roller coaster ride!