Agbara Nla: The Return unfolds with theatrical sentimentality, its actions and characters melodramatic and larger-than-life, partly honouring and immortalising the unique.
By Adedamola Jones Adedayo
In 1993, the unique Agbara Nla (1993) was launched below the aegis of Mount Zion Religion Ministries, turning into an indicator of Christian faith-based filmmaking. The traditional, written, produced and directed by Mike Bamiloye, additionally had the filmmaker portraying the lead character, Isawuru, a herbalist from the village of Muwonleru who wields unimaginable diabolical powers. He liaises with witches and different darkish forces to maintain the folks in bondage whereas outwardly portraying himself as an answer supplier to their religious issues. Amidst different subplots that come up inside the three-part narrative, Isawuru’s authority is threatened when he encounters a superior supernatural pressure that strikes in opposition to all the things he stands for.
As with many Christian movies that turned common within the Nineties and 2000s, the Mount Zion traditional centralised the battle between good and evil forces. The supreme authority for the nice, noble and righteous forces was the Christian God. Evil meant various religious allegiances and manifestations, usually characterised by deceptive ideas and actions that weren’t God’s. Whereas each forces cohabited the identical cinematic world, they had been tied to totally different circumstances, with the previous ultimately triumphing over the latter. With such faith-themed productions, additionally, there was the last word goal of propagating the gospel of Christ and making Christianity a sexy faith for nonbelievers to comply with. The perks had been apparent. Not solely did the Christian religion, by way of the movies, provide insurance coverage in opposition to fast, random acts of malevolence orchestrated by foes, but it surely additionally promised an eternal reward for its adherents past the bodily world.
Thirty-three years after the primary model, Agbara Nla returns to the screens with a extra trendy, subtle and refurbished outlook. The present cinema manufacturing is a remake that builds on the legacy of the 1993 house video movie, exploring related themes of Christian spirituality, energy dynamics, and the conflict between good and evil forces.
Components of the storyline and characters from the older model are retained within the newer one, however actors, aesthetics and magnificence have modified. The forged consists of non-mainstream actors, corresponding to Gloria Bamiloye, Philip Olubakin, Mosiko Remilekun Adesina, Yemi Adepoju, David Kola Okeowo, Omolara Ayoola, and Aanu Kolade Abiodun.
The movie is produced by Chris Odeh (who produced earlier remakes corresponding to Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story (2020) and Nneka the Fairly Serpent (2020)), Mohammed Sedik and Damilola Mike-Bamiloye. The administrators are Damilola and Joshua Mike-Bamiloye, each youngsters of the filmmaker behind the traditional, who then be certain that the identical principal actor, their father, re-animates and reimagines Isawuru.
Isawuru, in Agbara Nla: The Return, is portrayed as a power-drunk and self-obsessed fellow, whose affect cuts throughout each the religious and political spheres of his city. As mirrored within the opening scenes of the movie, he’s fast to dispatch kings that don’t undergo his authority, imposing himself as an unofficial, roguish kingmaker. However he additionally stays the identical herbalist pandering to the whims and dictates of darkish forces. Mike Bamiloye infuses the character with the awe it deserves for a lot of the movie, his expertise and ageing body useful in his conceptualisation as an authoritative determine.
Agbara Nla: The Return opens like an epic drama, introducing Oba Adetunji (David Kola Okeowo), who’s below religious assault from Isawuru. Isawuru then bodily confronts the king in his palace and calls for to be consistently paid homage. His excesses and malevolent disposition are already established right here.
Whereas the king is in misery, Isawuru connives with darkish forces to unseat him, wiping out your entire royal family in ugly trend. This direct confrontation with royal authority, which is unfamiliar territory for the unique narrative, quickly turns into overshadowed by acquainted characters and actions paying homage to the 1993 traditional. At this level, the narrative has morphed into the supernatural gospel drama it’s identified for.
Kola (Damilola Mike-Bamiloye), a distant relative of the outwitted king of Muwonleru, and his spouse, Bose (Aanu Kolade Abiodun), are the primary couple we meet within the metropolis. Kola informs his spouse that he has obtained directions from his maker, the Christian God, for them to relocate to Muwonleru, the place they’ll perform missionary actions aimed on the city’s religious emancipation.
As within the authentic movie, Bose objects to the choice, making a battle of commitments between the couple. When a job promotion beckons, they’re additional distracted by the promise of a greater life within the metropolis, which appears preferable to the uncertainty, discomfort and potential perils of relocating to a distant city.
There’s Olaboye (Philip Olubakin) and his spouse, Olatomi (Remilekun Mosiko Adesina), one other couple and household introduced as the best godly, upright and spiritually appropriate pair. They submit themselves to the desire of God, relocating to Muwonleru, the place they face religious persecution from Isawuru of their try and free the city from his clutches.
The evil supernatural forces in Agbara Nla: The Return stay trustworthy to the unique movie, however their effectiveness relies on how the remake interprets them into a recent cinematic language. With the help of trendy costume, manufacturing design and sound, the movie amplifies the menace of figures corresponding to Aro Meta, the ẹmẹ̀rẹ̀ and Ologosho Dudu, all devices of diabolical affliction inside the protagonist’s attain, and Paulina/Ayamatanga (Omolara Ayoola).
Paulina, specifically, advantages from a extra convincing visualisation of her wealth and ostentatious life-style, whereas her transformation into Ayamatanga depends on exaggerated efficiency and possession as an expression of evil. The result’s in keeping with the narrative’s total melodramatic, evangelical sensibility, one which favours conspicuous shows of religious conflicts.
In contrast to the unique movie, Agbara Nla: The Return adopts a considerably distinct narrative method, condensing the predecessor’s over six-hour runtime throughout three components right into a single feature-length movie of roughly two hours and thirty minutes.
To attain this, the remake makes use of title playing cards to interrupt the story into 9 chapters, every with a spotlight that helps the narrative and characters stay compact. From a inventive perspective, this division works as a result of, in contrast to the unique movie, the story maintains a chronological order of occasions, barring occasional use of flashbacks, whereas avoiding extraneous dialogue and scenes. It permits the viewers to comply with the subplots with out dropping contact with essential character arcs.
Agbara Nla: The Return unfolds with theatrical sentimentality, its actions and characters melodramatic and larger-than-life in a means that partly honours and immortalises the unique model. A number of faith-based productions from the identical period—corresponding to Helen Ukpabio’s Finish of the Depraved (1999), Freeway to the Grave (2000) and Married to a Witch (2001)—relied on heightened, usually gory depictions of unfavourable religious forces to stress the facility and significance of their optimistic counterparts. In these movies, the spectacle of evil served to bolster the triumph of religious mild and benevolence. They usually took painstaking care in dramatising the manifestations of evil, utilizing worry as a psychological instrument to discourage audiences from what they considered reprobate practices and steer them in direction of a supposedly extra righteous religion.
Right here, the filmmakers incorporate parts of horror, drama, suspense and thriller, portray a perceptible picture of religious warfare when considered by way of the lens of the Christian faith. At occasions, this fusion works, owing to the peculiarity of the movie’s multi-genre method and the filmmaking period from which it attracts inspiration. It makes the movie pleasant as a typical Previous Nollywood-styled manufacturing, regardless of the presence of recent filmmaking strategies and aesthetics. At different occasions, nevertheless, the depiction of magic, witchcraft and otherworldly influences feels pressured and overdramatised, depleting the movie’s sense of realism.
An inherent high quality of faith-based storytelling, which this remake articulates, is the fixation on morality and redemption. The narrative strongly emphasises the concept characters’ actions have ethical and religious penalties, with good deeds rewarded and evil deeds punished accordingly. However there’s additionally the “second likelihood” phenomenon that comes into play, which validates the Christian doctrine favouring forgiveness and religious rebirth over condemnation. Drawing an uncompromising line between good and evil, the movie makes its decision predictable lengthy earlier than the ending, diminishing suspense as audiences anticipate a conclusion that adheres to Christian filmmaking philosophy.
There’s, nevertheless, some concern about how repentance, redemption and the absence or inequivalence of penalties may translate into questionable ethical interpretations. Whereas Christian filmmaking philosophy, as mirrored in Agbara Nla: The Return, sees repentance as a mechanism for optimistic transformation, it comes with the danger of suggesting to the viewers that repentance alone is sufficient to absolve wrongdoing. With the movie’s final precedence positioned on religious rebirth, it speaks much less to the opportunity of accompanying redemption with restitution and reckoning with previous actions, which some may argue are additionally beliefs of the Christian religion.
Story-wise, the place Agbara Nla: The Return usually falters is within the space of character improvement and world-building. After initially introducing a king along with his council of elders within the opening scenes, the movie makes no additional reference to the existence of any such organised management within the city of Muwonleru. As a substitute, the movie proceeds treacherously, with out being in keeping with its earlier hint of conventional authority and denying the protagonist the depth of characterisation vital to ascertain him as a menace to the royal establishment. This weakens the movie’s inner logic and makes the depiction of Muwonleru much less convincing given the communal setting by which the narrative unfolds.
Equally underdeveloped is Ifagbemi, a belligerent younger man and son of Isawuru who usually bellows whereas showering eulogies on his father. The movie presents a masculine determine whose accountability is that of a right-hand man. However regardless of being ostensibly the one son, he receives too little consideration for the viewers to know his character or his relationship along with his father. As a substitute, he turns into a handy plot gadget by way of which Isawuru’s selections are influenced, whereas the father-son dynamic largely stays unexplored.
Shortcomings however, one factor the remake of the Christian movie traditional proves, which is probably its most fascinating takeaway, is the existence of an underserved viewers and the presence of a spot within the Nigerian cinema market that filmmakers and distributors have but to totally discover. To this point, the movie has had an encouraging run in home cinemas, grossing 170.6 million naira in its first weekend to set a brand new document for the largest non-December opening for a Nollywood movie. As reported by Movie Intelligence, its field workplace efficiency trails solely All people Loves Jenifa (2024) and Behind the Scenes (2025), putting it among the many largest business successes in Nollywood’s historical past. It’s also the largest opening for a faith-based Nigerian movie.
Past validating the legacy of the movie, these data counsel that the Nigerian viewers can’t be lowered to a monolithic group with uniform cinematic tastes and preferences. The short lesson right here is that spiritual audiences are usually not essentially faraway from the business potentialities for mainstream cinema, nor ought to their tastes be subjected to the idea that faith-based movies enchantment solely to a slim, predictable demographic.
Score: 3/5
Adedamola Jones Adedayo is a movie journalist and critic with particular curiosity in African cinema. By way of writing and audiovisual mediums, he creates conversations round cinema in Africa and the Diaspora. You’ll find him on Instagram @jonesthegoodboy and X on AdedamolaAdeda4.
