I Watched The Nollywood Movie "Karishika" So You Don't Have To

Once upon a time, I recapped an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity. The article’s popularity made me turn my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To“, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc) and recap them for your pleasure.

Today, I’ll be recapping the 1996 Nollywood horror classic, Karishika.

Am I the only one who thought Karishika was Satan’s employee? Why does this say he’s in trouble?

It was the 1990s and for some strange reason, Nigerians just couldn’t get enough of Nollywood movies about fine, light-skinned women coming to earth from hell to kill, steal, and destroy men who were unlucky enough to eat their snail. Producers picked up on this and began churning them out anyhow and that’s how we got movies like Nneka the Pretty Serpent, Sakobi the Snake Girl, and, the movie I will be recapping today, Karishika.

The movie starts with a company-wide meeting in hell. You know people are gathered because you can hear their voices but you can’t properly see them because the movie’s lighting is shit. The meeting is being led by Lucifer, who is dressed in what looks like a Whore of Babylon halloween costume.

Satan is upset because hell isn’t getting enough new souls and he hates having to hang out with the same tortured souls all the time. He says he needs someone to send earth to recruit more souls. For a few seconds, all the demons unlook and I don’t blame them because who the fuck wants that kind of responsibility? Just when you think no one is going to volunteer, Karishika steps forward and is like:

So Satan transfers some of his powers to her by spiritually vomiting in her mouth…

…and sends her to earth via a portal disguised as a tomb in a graveyard.

I can’t believe an Ankara shirt and abortion belt combo was the best Hell’s wardrobe department could do.

After leaving the graveyard, she kills the first person she sees and steals his car.

Karishika goes to a church the next day, shape-shifts into a cabman, and picks up two passengers. One of them is a woman named Bianca who has been struggling to get pregnant and is telling her friend about it. The next day, Karishika shape-shifts into the friend Bianca shared a cab with and goes to Bianca’s house to tell her about a spiritualist named Daddy Jonathan who specializes in helping women looking to conceive. Bianca is initially against this idea because of her faith but Karishika is like:

Bianca suggests visiting Daddy Jonathan and her husband, Desmond, is furious. He orders her not to go and even reports her to their pastor but she goes anyway. Daddy Jonathan (with Karishika posing as his assistant but really just there to enjoy the chaos) takes her to the middle of a forest and performs a ritual during which he beats her with a crucifix…

…and slits the throat of a pigeon over head, drenching her in its blood.

I believe that this movie and the original Living in Bondage exist in the same universe. Don’t even try to convince me otherwise.

When Daddy Jonathan’s ritual doesn’t work, Karishika, who has befriended Bianca at this point, takes her to appease a river goddess with eggs in the hopes that the river goddess will give Bianca a child. Instead, the goddess says this:

Bianca screams and passes out while Karishika turns into a fish and possesses Bianca. Bianca ends up in the hospital (the movie doesn’t say how she got there) with Desmond and pastor having a hot prayer session at her bedside. Karishika leaves Bianca’s body because the prayer is too much which causes Bianca to wake up and reveal all the spiritual hijinks she’s been up to.

Because Karishika is a messy bitch who lives for chaos, she finds another woman struggling to conceive and brings her to Daddy Jonathan.

She also goes to seduce some random pastor who has nothing to do with the movie’s plot. She goes to him under the guise of having an evil spirit problem and asks him to pray for her. Presented in a series of images without commentary, this is how the prayer session goes:

And then they proceed to bump genitals.

Meanwhile, Bianca has finally gotten knocked up and gives birth to a baby boy she Igbo-ly names Divine. The other woman who Karishika took to Daddy Jonathan dies while giving birth to a baby-shaped tuber of yam.

And he left his wife’s body there.

A few years later, Bianca and Desmond’s son, Divine, has grown up to be a piece of shit, stealing and causing trouble everywhere. Bianca suggests that they take Divine for deliverance but Desmond refuses. When they both have synchronised nightmares about Divine trying to stab them to death, they decide to go to a pastor. On their way out of the house in the middle of the night, they run into the pastor in their living room. When they ask him why he’s there, he says:

And the entire time I’m just like, “DID YOU PEOPLE GO TO SLEEP WITHOUT LOCKING YOUR DOORS?!”

The pastor says he can sense evil in the house and asks to see their son. They make their way to his bedroom when they realise he’s been unconscious at a corner of the living room.

The same living room they’ve all been in this whole time.

HOW DID THEY NOT SEE HIM ON THEIR WAY OUT?!

The pastor performs an exorcism on Divine and this causes Karishika and a coupe of other demons to appear and start attacking the pastor with what looks like the choreography from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Lucifer, who has had a sickening costume change, is watching everything on his 32 inch TV in hell…

…when an angel descends from heaven to whoop his ass.

I REALLY need you guys to see this angel up close.

The angel tells Lucifer to stop being an evil bastard and Lucifer is like, “Fuck no.” So the angel leaves and God crushes all of hell with his giant caucasian palm.

Literally.