Obayifo Project – review

Director: Paco Arasanz

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The obayifo is an African vampire type and as Bane describes it: “The Ashanti people of the Gold Coast of Africa have in their vampiric lore a witch who uses his powers to drain the life and energy from children and crops.” So, very much an energy vampire – this is changed in the film – the Bane entry also suggests that they are born with a disposition to be obayifo, so a person cannot simply be turned, and is obsessed with food.

This is an interesting premise and one that is mishandled by giving in to the worst excesses of the found footage genre.

crew selfie

Intertitles tell us this is footage from police files and then, after an opening of indistinct POV footage overdubbed with the start of a police interview with Julio (Sergio María), dating the film to 2023, the film cuts to Julio and his new camper van. He is with girlfriend Carol (María Monroy) and meeting up with cameraman Carlos (Luciano Ciaglia) – who sometimes is called Charlie in film – and they are going to make a movie entitled, Julio tells them, Obayifo 2.

getting on the road

When asked why it is number 2, he explains that in 2003 a group of Ghanaian filmmakers looked to make the African Blair Witch Project and had a shaman invoke an obayifo into the body of a homeless man. So, we have vampiric possession and also a veer from the folklore as relayed by Bane. The footage is online and he shows them (we don’t see it, only Carol’s reaction). The homeless man died, came back to life and attacked the filmmakers slaughtering everyone. He has no memory of the events, apparently.

Siberou Saar as Dr Deke

They drive to Fort Bravo – a wild west styled theme park in Almeria, Spain, where he is meeting Samuel (Lord Berko) who has arranged a meeting for them with Dr Deke (Siberou Saar), a shaman. He gives them a note that will get them past his guardians and says that Deke has agreed to do the ritual for €1000. We get some footage explaining the obayifo – it was unclear but I assume it was meant to be from the earlier film. They then go to meet Deke who, as Carlos had mentioned en route, is Senegalese, so when he is shown the ritual footage he points out that he is from Senegal not Ghana and makes a comment about it all being the same to them. This was an interesting racial prejudice angle that, whilst touched on a couple of times in a comment about not respecting the ritual and a racial slur, was not capitalised upon at all.

the ritual

Deke agrees to do the ritual the next night and reluctantly finds a receptor (Favour David Iyawe) for the spirit. When they start the ritual the receptor can’t help but laugh and so Julio gives him a sedative – later revealed to be MDPV, named in film as a cannibal drug, and a stimulant. The receptor, who is fitted with a chest camera, goes into convulsions and dies. This causes the filmmakers to freak; they take the body to the van with the aim of getting him to hospital, this quickly devolves to Julio deciding to bury him and pulling a gun on the others to force compliance. The film ignores that they knew the original possessed man in Ghana died and then returned and they drive off having left the camera on him! On return, to retrieve said camera, he is up and at ‘em already and they are able to turn its light on and see footage live (as they try and find him).

camera glitch

I mentioned the worst excesses of the found footage genre and we get shaky cameras, annoying noises (like wind) on the footage and indistinct footage due to lack of lighting. It hides the joins, of course, but makes it a pain to watch. The characters are not really interesting enough to hold attention and then the bickering once it goes wrong just loops through overly similar dialogue. The film could be read as a psychotic break caused by the drug and being buried in a shallow grave – after all the obayifo seems to be murdering not feeding. However there is a camera glitch that shows the obayifo overlayed on the receptor before the ritual. The intrusion of the obayifo at the police station, when the incident takes place in the middle of nowhere so is presumably miles away, and shots fired to no effect also suggests a supernatural element.

attack

A mid-credit sequence gives us an influencer (Marila Lombrozo), who has the footage, looking to do a Twitch version of the ritual is placed in order to announce a sequel Obayifo Project: World Domination. My advice is that the racial aspect was really interesting, do more of that, but drop the found footage style and film it properly. That style drops this one to 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon UK