A Review of HIM: When The Monster Is You

HIM. A film by Stephen Gakuo.

I recently went to a movie screening only to wind up collecting my brains off the red carpet of the compact, Unseen Nairobi cinema. Pffff! Mind blown!

The 27-minute film is called 'HIM'. As you can imagine, it's about HIM___ a damned man who looked over the teary eyes of his wife and kids, and straight into the eyes of his enemies as he pulled the trigger on them; wife and kids.

Why, you might wonder? None of the reasons below suffice, but here we go. It is probably because the enemies had raped his wife, maimed his son, and scarred his children's minds perhaps for life__ in an attempt to break HIM. To send a message.

HIM, on the other side, had a different kind of mindset. He wouldn't let those people walk away thinking they could mess with HIM. He wouldn't let them think they had found his weakness. Besides, the wife is raped, the children hurt, and all destroyed. He saw nothing left to salvage. Right?

So, in the heat of the moment, and a moment of twisted clarity, he decided that he would walk over his family's dead bodies to get to his enemies. Who dared mess with HIM? The baddest assassin of his time. A legend in the shadows. They must never think HIM weak! So to send his own message, he went on a bloodthirsty revenge mission, recruiting fellow assassins to go after his audacious enemies and kill them, and their families too.

Thus began the hunt. Many men, women, and children were taken down one after another. None was to be spared. It got to the point where even the rest of the assassins started to question the mission, and the frenzy, the endless killings, and especially why they had to shed the blood of innocent children too. On the other hand, HIM was just getting started, and he didn't like being questioned.

I won't spoil the whole movie for you, but well, it was quite a watch. Do you know what is most incredible? Would you imagine that the movie was made on a zero-budget! That means a limited crew, a small cast, and pure passion.

In Stephen's words, "HIM represents the kind of situation that you can't get out of or rid of. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object." It did not matter whether HIM killed all his enemies and eliminated their entire bloodlines; at the end of it all, it was he himself who murdered his entire family, and while he exercised his revenge, he would eventually have to face himself.

We ended up watching the film twice, and the crowd still did not have enough of it. A complex and sophisticated idea was executed so simply yet accurately that people connected with this piece of art in different ways with each watch. That. That is genius.

The cinematography style was bold, intentional, and embedded perfectly to evoke those dark emotions. Not to mention, it was very different from local productions, crafting its own visual language. The sound engineering was nearly impeccable as well.

As a bonus, we got a sneak peek into a project they are working on. We watched a 2-minute-long fight scene, and oh my!

Many thanks to Ariverse LLC for that wonderful film. It is incredible to see a surreal idea getting to the masses in such authentic design. If you hold the future of the film industry in Kenya and Africa at large, then I'd say we are in good hands.

The film is in loving memory of Benedict Wilfred.