Do-overs are never out of season in the business of filmmaking. So, just over a year after a disastrous attempt at telling a Lady Koi-Koi story, Nollywood takes another stab at the legend with Ms. Kanyin, directed by Jerry Ossai and produced by Nemsia Studios. For the uninitiated, Lady Koi-Koi (or Ms. Koi-Koi, depending on what part of Nigeria you’re from) is a ghost said to haunt the hallways of female boarding schools. She’s named after the click of her high-heeled shoes.
In Ossai’s telling, the eponymous Ms. Kanyin, as played by Michelle Dede, is a beautiful woman with Paris dreams. She teaches French at Sterling Academy, a boarding school where her poise and passion inspire several students to pursue the subject in their forthcoming WASSCE exams, hopeful it will open doors to international advancement.
Trouble brews when Amara (Temi Otedola), a typically stellar student, nearly fails her mock French exam. This threatens her academic future as doubt creeps in: Has Ms. Kanyin led her and others astray? Is French (even that) important? But in the teachers’ lounge, the conclusion is long forgone: Ms. Kanyin isn’t all that. Her apparent sophistication is mere affectation. She’s never been to Paris, after all.
Joining the drama is a clique comprised of Finditae (Kanaga Eme Jnr), Lami (Damilola Bolarinde), Fiona (Aduke Shittabey), and Uti (played by upcoming Nollywood heartthrob, Natse Jemide). The machinations of these kids provide Ms Kanyin‘s narrative thrust. Ademola Adedoyin and Kalu Ikeagwu play Teacher Mustapha and the school’s Principal, respectively, bringing in adult contempt and frustration to the tale.
Otedola’s acting—or its evolution—is worthy of note here. In 2020, as a first-timer, she was shaky playing a rather meek student in Kunle Afolayan’s Citation. There’s none of that shakiness this time. She channels fury, guile, and poise in Ms. Kanyin. If the jury was out on her abilities before, the verdict is in now: the lady can act. Credit must also go to the film’s screenwriters, Tobe Otuogbodor and Yemi Nexus Adeyemi, for sidestepping the saintly one-dimensionality often assigned to “brilliant students” in the Nigerian imagination, thus giving Otedola substantial material to work with. In Ms. Kanyin, brilliant students can be bright and flawed. They might dream big but they also lash out and sulk.
Ms. Kanyin is a relatively decent supernatural thriller but Nollywood’s search for a great Lady Koi-Koi continues. Efiko Score: 5.5/10
Still, even as Ms. Kanyin succeeds in delivering believable performances and a sound narrative structure, the film stumbles in technical execution. Barely five minutes in, a glaring error jolts the viewer: a close-up of a student’s jotter shows a date from 2024—in a film seemingly set in the 1990s. This is not the only misstep. Some lens choices feel arbitrary and audio clips are either mismatched with subtitles or tonally disruptive.
Nemsia productions’ usual visual polish is present, but not always to good effect. Their signature coding and colour palette, often a strength, is overworked here. The grading is so exaggerated that characters appear digitally pasted into their scenes, so that, on occasion, what the viewer sees feels more AI-generated than filmed. Over the film’s almost two-hour runtime, the polish becomes a distraction.
The film’s strangest shortcoming is an absence of theme. For all of its careful plotting, it remains unclear what Ms. Kanyin is trying to say, if it’s saying anything at all. This isn’t a call for moral lessons. But urban legends, especially horror-laced ones, usually reflect the fears and/or obsessions of the society that births them. Western vampire myths have been linked to anxieties about disease, queerness, and sexuality. What does it mean that the central horror of Nigeria’s girls’ schools is a lady in supposedly red high heels?
That such a figure is said to attack people on the cusp of sexual awakening indicates something obvious. But Ossai’s film has no interest in exploring what lies beneath. Sex and its attendant tensions are a foreign concept in this universe. There’s also a lack of a clear culture anchor for the story told. Is it Bini? Yoruba? Something else?
Away from this lack of subtext and cultural context, Ms. Kanyin presses on. When it leans into horror, the jump scares land—even as viewers of a certain age might wish for a dash of Old Nollywood witchy music.
Ms. Kanyin is currently streaming on Prime Video.
