There are no spoilers in this review; no need—it’s terrible.

The production team for Dark October on Netflix and their financiers deserve to be questioned for their choices! The movie itself was several steps beyond shambolic! It was a hurried and horrid attempt at storytelling. In film school, the entire project should be studied for how deliberate it was about being mediocre and managing to get even the simplest things completely wrong.

Don’t worry, there’s more.

Netflix has been implicated in several gaffes in the past. The streaming platform has managed to onboard some of the worst pieces of acting globally, but very few thought things could become this terrible. Linda Ikeji’s recent attempt to ridicule Nollywood and mock her Nigerian audience belongs at the Olusosun refuse dump, not on Netflix. 

While there are calls for the movie to be deplatformed because the families of the victims were completely blindsided by the release only for someone else to profit from their trauma, for this author, “Dark October” simply isn’t good enough to be representative of that piece of history. Look at the color grading—literally from the 1980s!

If you want to torture another human being, someone you hate, get on Netflix, search for “Dark October,” and hit play. You’d have effectively taken the person into a world of incoherence and ineptitude and robbed the watcher of nearly two hours they’d never get back. You’d have watched the worst version of oshistry play out in front of you—for context, that’s “history” but spelt with the quality of the movie.

The movie’s dull attempt at immortalizing the Aluu 4 represents the lowest point of filmmaking in the past two decades. Poorly researched. terrible performances, all around. Thoughtless in the pre- and post-production processes And worst of all, needlessly chaotic!

If you thought it was impossible to lower the bar in Nollywood, Linda Ikeji, in collaboration with Netflix, has proved that the bar can go even lower! “Dark October” is a lasting stain on the already muddied garment of Nollywood and is further proof that Nollywood and Netflix have no desire to rid themselves of the plague of mediocrity. 

In summary, Linda Ikeji’s “Dark October” is a complete waste of time—if your day or night has any value to you, avoid the mediocrity that is “Dark October.”