Rating: C+
Dir: T. West
Star: Magezi Tabitha, T. West, Kirabo Katungi, Bikoomi Samuel
I had just about resigned myself to the fact that 31 More Countries of Horror was only going to include one entry from Africa, when I stumbled across this on Tubi, entirely by accident. What I was doing was looking to see if the service had the other film by the same title – you know, the one about Ed Gein. It did not. However, it did have four movies called Deranged, and the description of this one caught my eye: “Disowned by her father after getting mysteriously impregnated, 17-year-old Julie, with nowhere else to turn, winds up in the hands of a psychotic man.” Tubi had it filled under “drama”, but I felt it was worth a shot.
And here we are, covering a Ugandan movie which does not have a Video Joker yelling enthusiastically in the background for the entire duration. Oh, make no mistake. I love the likes of Who Killed Captain Alex?, which has a can-do spirit and energy completely unlike anything made in the West. But it’s not an approach which works for darker topics: if the makers clearly can’t take themselves seriously, why should the audience? In contrast, this is a “proper” movie, with a solid plot and well-defined characters, though comes with the same undeniable sense of place as Captain Alex. While the drama is there, as well as thriller elements, I’d say it meets the threshold for horror too.
Film-making in Uganda does not seem to have a great deal of history behind it. The first film in the IMDb giving it as the country of origin was as recently as 2004, being Steven Jack Nyeko’s mystery, Full of Energy. This can be both a blessing and a bane. It means there is a shortage of cinematic infrastructure, and the lack of technically skilled personnel is also an issue, with many film-makers being self-taught. However, it also means a shortage of preconceived notions as to what “cinema” means, as we see in the Video Joker concept. The influences tend to be movies from other countries, filtered through local sensibilities and reflecting local topics.
For instance, the synopsis of 2007’s The Honourable is: “A corrupt, philandering Ugandan magistrate tests positive for HIV and goes on a malicious sexual quest to spread the virus to naive young women.” Sadly, no further information is available, which is a shame. I’d like to see it and find out if it is as close to The Ebola Syndrome as it sounds. Horror has had an even shorter history, beginning with Valentine: The Satanic Day in 2010, one of the earlier features by Captain Alex director Nabwana I.G.G.. The IMDb lists only a dozen horror movies, and that includes as-yet uncompleted works like Nabwana’s Eaten Alive in Uganda, whose page was last updated in 2017. Though Bunjako seems like it might be an energetic bit of jungle nonsense.
Deranged is not among these, as noted above. Though if it’s anything, it feels closer to Victorian melodrama, with its strong emphasis on old-school morality, and what happens if you fail to abide by its principles. It certainly does not hang around – at seventy-nine minutes, it can’t afford to. Inside the first eight minutes, unmarried but pregnant heroine Julie (Tabitha) has been kicked out of the family home by stern father Dominic (Samuel), rejected by her boyfriend Wilbur, whose wife Emily (Katungi) then commits hara-kiri in the middle of the street, due to his infidelity. Julie is then spurned by her ex-boyfriend, and attempts suicide, all before meeting Tembo (West). He seems nice at first. Key words: “at first”. It’s not long before his darker side shows up, psychologically and physically abusing Julie, under the delusion her child is his. His mental illness only escalates from there.
So far, so dark thriller more than horror, perhaps. However, just after half-way, he’s visited by the ghost of Emily, in what initially seems like it is just a nightmare – or, at most, another symptom of Tembo’s insanity. Yet in a twist, Emily then appears to Julie as well, explaining, “I’m here to destroy your happiness, as you did to mine,” then eggs Tembo on in his abuse. It’s the supernatural element, with a vengeful spirit, which moves this into the horror genre. Interestingly, there’s absolutely no special effects involved here. Emily just walks into her scenes, and appears indistinguishable from a living person. While no doubt the lack of budget was a factor, it works in the context of the movie, grounding her presence in a way crappy FX would likely fail to manage.
Mr. West – or, to give him his full nomenclature, as listed in the end credits, T. West Ttabu Wasswa Stephen – pulls triple duty here, as writer, director and the main antagonist. We have documented the problems such behaviour can cause, but he does adequately well across the board in Deranged. There are a few shaky moments, such as when a fight sequence just fades to black in the middle, and you are left with no idea who won. However, he gives a genuinely disturbing performance as Tembo, who certainly lives up to the title, and always seems on the edge of violence. There’s one particularly striking moment, when Tembo is running down the road, and in the trees behind him, we glimpse the figure of Emily. No further explanation is offered, making it all the more effective.
We are certainly deep into fairly basic film-making: subtlety and nuance are not words you’d use to describe proceedings here. There’s an entirely useless subplot about the local police harassing the young man they blame for Julie’s disappearance, and at times the heroine doesn’t seem a very nice person. For instance, at one point she makes a rape accusation which gets the supposed perpetrator bludgeoned to death by Tembo. I’m not sure of the moral lesson to be learned there. Yet this is never less than interesting – albeit sometimes more from the glimpse it gives into a foreign culture, than as a movie on its own, intended terms.
This review is part of our October 2024 feature, 31 More Countries of Horror.