From the first few minutes of To Kill a Monkey, you’re drawn into an eerie, high-stakes world that feels equal parts crime thriller, spiritual horror, and economic desperation; a wild experience that’ll have you simultaneously applauding and scratching your head. It’s stylish, tense, and packed with drama you can’t look away from.
The 8-episode thriller follows Efe (William Benson), a broke tech bro in the trenches, whose life takes a sharp left turn into cybercrime after reconnecting with a rich, mysterious uni friend, Oboz (Bucci Franklin). Add one monkey mask, a few drops of blood, and boom, we’re off.
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Let’s start with the performances. Every single actor brought their A-game. The casting chemistry is so perfect you’d think they were all related in real life. Watching these characters navigate their messy lives feels authentic.
The dialogue is sharp in places, and the character pairings are electric. Bimbo Akintola as Inspector Mo?
The way she embodies grief, obsession, and professional frustration; immaculate. Bucci Franklin as Oboz da boss, William Benson as Efemini, Stella Damasus as Nosa, Teniola Aladese as Ivie; absolute perfection.
And can we talk about that opening sequence? Blood rituals, monkey masks, sipping from mortars. Brilliant. The visual storytelling in these moments is genuinely chilling and sets up an atmosphere that hooks you immediately.
The technical craft is where this series truly shines. The sound design is sharp and immersive, elevated by an original score composed and produced by Oscar Heman-Ackah, Adetiba’s husband.
The music is purposeful, tense when it needs to be, haunting when it should be. Those foreboding sounds and intentional musical choices create tension that seeps into your bones. Each eerie hum, every dramatic crescendo, was placed with intention.
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The cinematography complements this beautifully. It sets the mood, tells its own story. Lagos is filmed like a character with secrets, one minute, it’s sweaty backstreets and shadows that swallow light, the next, it’s all glossy high-rises and slow-moving traffic.
The camera dances between chaos and calm, always knowing when to pull back and close in like it’s trying to read a character’s thoughts.
Take the shrine scenes, for instance, soaked in red with shadows and silhouettes, they carry a weight that’s more spiritual than cinematic. It doesn’t lean on cheap horror tricks; it lets the atmosphere do the haunting.
Then there’s the contrast between Efe’s dusty, drained reality and the slick, neon-drenched life dangled in front of him like a trap. The visuals speak in metaphors, showing us the war between desperation and desire before the characters even open their mouths.
It’s stylish. It’s deliberate. And it’s the kind of visual storytelling that makes you pause, to admire, but even more, to feel.
Efe’s poverty is painted so vividly you can practically feel the weight of his shoulder bag.
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But here’s where it seems to fall off (spoiler alert)
To Kill a Monkey occasionally stumbles into a familiar Nollywood pitfall, introducing characters with the promise of significance, only to leave their purpose vague or underdeveloped.
Take Sparkle, a popular internet ‘baddie’. She waltzes in, has beef with Oboz at a club, seduces Efe, then betrays him as part of some revenge plot connected to Teacher, played by Chidi Mokeme (a gang leader we barely know).
She never quite comes across as someone strategically planted by Teacher to target Oboz. Her sudden disdain for him feels more convenient than convincing, and her shift from disinterest in Efe to using him as a gateway to Oboz happens so abruptly that it’s hard to buy into the setup.
Teacher himself appears out of nowhere, terrorises everyone for 30% of their profits, then gets killed off by some random gang we’ve never heard of; a bit anticlimactic.
An episode dedicated to unpacking Oboz and Teacher’s history would have added real depth, especially since Teacher serves as a major antagonist.
Understanding their past could’ve offered valuable insight into his motivations and made his actions feel less abrupt and more grounded in character logic.
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Inspector Mo’s obsession with the Monkey case is one of the show’s more curious plot choices. Here’s a woman who’s lost everything, husband, children, status, and returns to work only to find herself demoted. So yes, ambition makes sense.
What’s strange is how disconnected the crimes feel from the world around them. The cyber scams seem to target foreigners or faceless outsiders, so Mo’s mission comes off as oddly detached from the reality of her environment.
A deeper exploration of how cybercrime also affects everyday Nigerians, students, small business owners, high-earning Nigerians and even public systems would’ve grounded her pursuit in something bigger than just a personal climb.
It would’ve raised the stakes for the audience, too, because then, it’s not just about catching Oboz and Co., it’s about confronting a system that’s already eating into the society she lives in.
And let’s not forget, Mo wasn’t even officially on the case. Meanwhile, the officer who was assigned just… disappears into applause and then thin air. No tension, no pushback, no scene-stealing power struggle.
Just Mo, carrying the Monkey case like a side quest no one asked her to take on, but everyone’s somehow letting her run with it.
Efe is recruited by Oboz specifically to handle the Artificial Intelligence side of the operation, creating tech that helps them scam clients through hyper-realistic fake video calls.
Now that’s a juicy premise. But do we ever actually see it in action? Nope. Not even a glimpse of the software, a test run, or a dodgy AI-generated face glitch.
It’s a fascinating setup just begging for a cinematic moment, but instead, it’s dropped in conversation and then forgotten like small talk at a loud party. Big build-up, no follow-through.
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So, should you watch it?
To Kill A Monkey is genuinely entertaining. Yes, it’s riddled with the same issues that plague many Nollywood productions: loose plotting, unexplored character motivations, and the occasional “wait, what?” moment. But when it works, it really works.
The performances alone are worth watching, and the technical execution shows that Nollywood is capable of matching international standards when given the resources.
This series is proof that Nigerian filmmakers can create atmosphere, tension, and compelling characters; they just need to work on connecting all the dots.
You can tell Kemi Adetiba put her heart and sophisticated brain into this. It’s ambitious and cinematic.
Most importantly, To Kill a Monkey keeps you watching. It’s bingeable, quotable, and feels like a step in the direction of the kind of gritty, character-led storytelling Nollywood is dying to do more of.
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