A wise man once said that personality can go a long way, and few film genres embody that adage better than horror does. What could be easily curtailed by a relatively rote premise or a deficiency of budget can often find salvation in the aims of the filmmakers to do something unusual and clever with well-worn tropes and pennies in their pockets. It's a tale as old as film itself is, really: when the chips are down and one can't hope to stand out by spending the most money, then crafting your film around your limitations is a great place to start, allowing you to work within the lines to craft a story worth telling and a style worth looking at. If one can't avoid the constraints entirely, then they can certainly see to it that it's not as detrimental as it normally would be. How best to achieve that, then? Options often include finding a new way to tell an old tale, often with thematic subject matter that it wasn't necessarily taking into consideration at the time as our world has changed so much since then, creating a visual style that makes the most of modest means through expressive camerawork that accentuates the mood and psychology of the setting and of the characters, and others still by daring to go down seldom explored topics as, while not necessarily graphic, can often bring to a potential audience a lot of baggage as they engage with it in a way that can be respectful to those that have themselves been victims of it in their own ways while not losing the intensity and shock of it all to have a difficult yet needed conversation about it in the first place.
Needless to say, the film here does well in grappling with most, if not all, of what I just described, resulting in a film willing to have its flaws exposed as it knows it's got something worth saying without sacrificing the horror itself to get to its point. Based on the legend of the titular Zulu mythological creature, the setup as our heroine finds her new job at a downtrodden hospital a bit more than she can bear with both hostile bosses and a a strange creature that seems to have its hooks in deep with the children of the makeshift orphanage that resides in the same building. As we get to know Busi, there is even more to her background prior to taking her new job that also adds a lot of depth to her character and of the story itself, setting up a surprisingly grand journey by the end of the film that's not afraid to have a lot more sweep than the initial premise suggests that it will have. Folks may be disappointed that the seeming haunted hospital film more or less ceases to be by the halfway mark, but in its place is a frequently surprising and captivating story as Busi's situation changes considerably and often suddenly that has her thinking on her feet, even as the means may not be there for her to make the absolute best decision at all times. It's those kinds of complications that draw you into the story more and more. The visual approach also manages to find ways of making Busi's emotions come alive with great framing that tells a lot of the story for us as her guarded nature is undone with a nice style that gets under her skin when she both most and least needs that kind of exposure, giving a lot of purpose to the style the film takes on. It does indeed opt for some old-fashioned tricks for the horror itself, but there's just enough ingenuity poured into the film that the budget not allowing for a lot of the Tokoloshe to be visually there most of the time that it manages to get some very effective notes to makes its presence known.
And of the subject matter itself, I do feel compelled to praise the handling of it all it at the expense of also serving as a warning for folks that may not already know what to expect, as the film does tackle the very ugly and painful reality of child abuse. Both sexual trauma and outright physical violence play key roles in the story here, including a triggering incident in which Busi is nearly raped by her boss that triggers a lot of deeply unhappy memories for her as a child herself, and though they never cross the line to anything outwardly graphic itself, they show enough to make one very uncomfortable during those scenes that produce genuine chills with the frankness of how they're presented. It's very stern and grim material, to be certain, but the film's solemn tone never crosses into outright misery porn as Busi's growth from a woman that simply never wanted to have to think about it again to one that knows she must confront the evil that haunts her is the kind of tale that pays off to allow for a convincing path to self-realization that you can be more than the demons that haunt you, both figurative and literal. If it's not quite inspirational for reasons I'll get into in a little bit, then it is the kind of aspirational tone that horror films could always do with a bit more of on the whole.
With so much to praise within the meager means of which the production was able to muster, it does make it unfortunate that there was only so much they can do in the end. One can forgive the technical faults that are sprinkled throughout with some visible cameras in reflections and some boom mics that manage to escape into the frame as they're not exactly uncommon territory to begin with, but it's hard not to feel that the film on the whole is missing a good half hour from what I have to imagine was the original script, likely to have never been filmed as they simply did not have the time or the money to do so. It results in a wealth of subplots getting dropped almost simultaneously, among them a key supporting character whose true nature is hinted at just enough to get an idea of where they would have been taking them, but the rushed nature of the film's final act pushes it so far to the wayside that it becomes nearly impossible to know for sure if that was the case. It also muddles some elements related to how Busi ultimately winds up overcoming and ultimately making her peace, as the very abrupt ending offers up a triumphant image of sorts with no real follow-through to help underline where the journey has taken her in the end. There's definitely the sense that the filmmakers here hoped that the visual metaphor, common as it is, gives the proper level of closure on its own terms, which I did find to be a step too far in feeling truly satisfying in the long run since it sorely needed that extra couple of minutes to get that follow-up. The lack of such key scenes and writing doesn't kill the film, far from it, but the absence is noticeable enough to make one wonder what we're missing out on as far as the final product is concerned, as I don't doubt that the extra half hour would have easily turned this into a proper cult classic.
Yet the film does get enough of the way there to recommend it to anyone looking for a more serious and dramatic spin on the spirits that haunt halls almost as much as the people themselves. The caveat of its depiction of troubling subject matter as I have described is one that should be heeded by anyone with a sensitivity to depictions of such, but I do find myself feeling strongly about what the film was able to accomplish to say that its worth the discomfort for what winds up being refreshingly mature about such matters. The outsider nature of a production like this allowed it to take some risks in spite of not having all the resources available to do more with them in the end, and I felt a lot of them do pay off even as the unfortunately shorted material ensured that even more of it could have been there if the circumstances were more favorable. It's easy to say that this is a good film up to a point as it technically is, but its verve and spirit ultimately makes for a captivating film with serious credentials and an uncommon sense of direction that even as you wish there was more of it to fully texture and flesh out the entire experience to a much greater whole, the legwork and the talent involved to get it as far as it does get in the end is rather commendable.
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