Nollywood

On screen, someone is agonizing loudly about something, and rolling on the ground in obvious pain as his hand clutches his midsection. Out of nowhere, a laughing spirit pops into the scene in a spectacular haze of cheap camera tricks, and it’s not clear if anything is that funny but it is laughing hard and eye-balling everyone and everything at the same time, to say nothing of ashy-looking skin, general awkwardness of bearing, and absolute shabbiness of clothing (Spirits don’t have swag.) After laughing and goofing off for a while, it shoots sparks, strobes, rays, lasers and fireballs out of its eyes and these things go and somehow kill the sufferer, whose gut reaction in the circumstances is to reach for own neck and thrash about rather vigorously. The spirit screams a high pitched laugh and disappears. Camera zooms in to the dead person’s bloodied face (Blood? How come?) and the music is supposed to portray that justice has been done because the soloist in the moralizing soundtrack is repeatedly laying stress on the chorus in this the climax of the movie. Viewers must now tolerate a full five minutes of the dead person being exhibited as the camera pans left and right between his eyes as if to search for signs of life. None, he’s the deadest man there ever was. Good. Screen blacks out to a message; “To God be the glory.” Credits roll. Another Nollywood production ends.