Olumense’s Koi Koi

Edith and Ade are two Nigerian boarding school students who have found themselves in a predicament. After playing what they assume to be a harmless prank, they quickly find themselves burdened with a curse. In order to break the curse they’ve placed on themselves, they have to perform a very specific ritual before 9pm rolls around. Because if they don’t, they have to face the wrath of the unforgiving Madame Koi Koi, the angry, vengeful spirit of a former teacher who was known to be evil even before she died.

Then what the hell made the two of you think stealing from her was a good idea?

It’s February again, the shortest month of the year, which means it’s officially “Shorts” month here at Random Movie Musings. Ergo this write-up will be… Short. And indeed, it’ll likely be shorter than most, because at less than five minutes long Olumense’s Koi Koi is on the shorter side of shorts, so there’s not too much to get into without giving anything away. So to say it’s a quick watch would be an understatement. But on the flip side of that, it also feels so brief that adding in a couple minutes to fill in some backstory might have been beneficial.

The story of Koi Koi is based on a popular Nigerian urban legend about a ghost who haunts the dormitories and hallways of boarding schools during the night, and sometimes even their restrooms during the day. According to the legend, Madame Koi Koi was a stylish teacher who would walk the halls in her fashionable high heels, and everyone could hear her coming thanks to the ‘koi koi’ sound her shoes made when they hit the floor (hence her name.) But she was also known to be a particularly nasty and wicked teacher and, depending on the version of the story you hear, was either fired for her job due to the abuse she caused and died in an accident on her way home, or was cornered by a group of angry students who couldn’t deal with her abusive shit anymore and they subsequently beaten to death. Either way, the woman came back super pissed and decided to haunt the school. Which is a pretty sweet legend as far as urban legends go. The problem is that the short film doesn’t really go into ANY of that. I had to look all that information up myself. The film merely opens with a text screen explaining that a teacher mysteriously died and that anyone who takes something from her room suffers a strange fate, and… That’s it. That’s as much info as you’re given. Which is still enough to get the point of the film across, I suppose. But that doesn’t really give a full explanation of what’s going on, so it would have been nice to have more of that nuanced background information included in the film itself. Because not only does doing that help flesh out the story, but it also helps explain the meaning of the title to us international viewers who wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with the legend or other country’s onomatopoeia’s.

My only other complaint is that the dialogue can be a bit hard to understand. The characters and the narration are all entirely in English, but everyone’s accent is so heavy that it can be kinda hard to know what it is they’re saying sometimes. I caught most of what was going on, but I was still missing every 3rd or 4th word. I think everyone just slowed down a bit and enunciated a little more clearly, then the issue would be solved. Thankfully though, the subtitle option worked just fine, and turning them on had the added benefit of also translating the various background sounds, so I was quickly able to find out what Koi Koi title stood for as the creepy ghost lady came walking down the hallway.

Other than that, Olumense’s Koi Koi is a perfectly fine short. It looks good, sounds okay (minus the dialogue issue), the makeup is decent, and it tells a nice, condensed story. I do wish it was a little longer so that I could have a little more background information on the ghost. But wanting more of it, and not less, just goes to show how nice the short is. So if you’re a fan of urban legends, then this is a good, quick watch that’ll give you a condensed overview of a rather popular legend.

Olumense’s Koi Koi is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

You can also find Olumense’s Koi Koi available online on various sites.

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