EfikoScore: 5.5/10.
Clarence Peters’ first major work outside music videos starts well and then completely loses its way.
If the music-video-director-to-filmmaker pipeline exists, it’s not one that’s regularly used in Nollywood. Of course, Kemi Adetiba has had undeniable success, but many music video directors haven’t exactly followed suit. As such, it’s a subject of interest to see Clarence Peters settle in the filmmaking chair with the limited series Inside Life, which recently landed on Netflix.
Eguchisom Sylvia, Gabriel Afolayan, Meg Otanwa, Chioma Ijeoma Omeruah, Gregory Ojefua, and Jide Kosoko appear in the series, while Peters is all over the project—in story, production, cinematography, directing.
From the start, Inside Life is intent on being fictional. Every episode starts with a disclaimer that says that’s the case. Yet early episodes show that this is not quite the case. Particularly for the country it is set in, Inside Life almost expertly showcases (for lack of better wording) how people fall into the hands of the carceral state. The series says imprisonment is more a case of luck, material position, and timing. It says the greatest horror in Nigeria is to be poor.
But if Inside Life is a brilliant reflection on Nigerian society in its early episodes, it fails heavily as it goes on. At first, the series has the feel of an anthology, then it shows us that characters in some episodes may connect to characters in others.
But not only is there no pay-off in that regard, the series turns into a fantasy with extra-terrestrial displays that it has barely bothered to set up in the first place. What happened to the prison tales? When did this become the story? When did we go from the realistic to the fantastic?
Inside Life should be better
This complete shift in story ruins Inside Life, which is a shame because the series is quite brilliantly shot. In the first episode, there is a great interaction between characters played by Gabriel Afolayan and Meg Otanwa. The different shots used riff on the dialogue and establish both parties.
There’s a shot of Afolayan’s visible scars and white-shot eyes when he’s presented as conniving and greedy, there’s a shot of two people either side of him when he boasts of being powerful, and so on. Sometimes the cinematography is a touch over-the-top, giving the feel of a music director trying to replicate his music video shtick in a series, but it works most of the time in the early episodes.
The use of sound also merits applause, even if there are times when the deployment of haunting notes and tonal shifts have no connection with what is going on. The dialogue also expresses authenticity and veracity, whether through mere diction or conversation.
Yet, for all its merit, Inside Life does veer off after the first few episodes, becoming something else entirely. This flaw might be singular, but it is of such import that it undoes most of the good bits in the series. It is the kind of flaw to leave its audience with a bitter taste. They’ll remember the moment the series lost its sense of intrigue.
Clarence Peters’ Inside Life sets up a good thing for itself and then undoes it. It could have been better. It should have been better. But it goes on to be worse.
