Reviewed: 'The Herd' Makes Insecurity Feels Uncomfortably Real

What begins as a tense crime thriller quickly mutates into something far more uncomfortable: a reflection of Nigeria’s present-day reality, stripped of metaphor, apology, or sentimentality.

At a time when another headline about mass abduction barely shocks anymore, The Herd feels less like a film and more like a warning bell rung too late. 

This is not escapist cinema. It doesn’t promise relief. Instead, it drags the audience into the same anxiety Nigerians live with daily, asking them to sit inside the fear.

How Safety Collapses in Seconds

The film opens gently. A wedding buzzes with laughter and colour. Aso-oke gleams. Music swells. The joy is distinctly Nigerian, familiar, communal, reassuring. And then, it is ripped apart.

A routine highway delay becomes the story’s fatal hinge. Armed men masquerading as herders pull guns, and what was once a celebration becomes terror.

The transition is fast, brutal, and intentional. Effiong understands a painful truth: insecurity in Nigeria rarely announces itself. It arrives disguised as normalcy.

The ambush does not feel staged or cinematic. It feels reported. Shot like an eyewitness account rather than a spectacle, the scene lands with the weight of realism. 

You don’t brace yourself for it, you’re already inside it before you can object.

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The Moral Costs of Staying Alive

Once dragged into the forest, The Herd abandons conventional heroism. Survival here is not noble; it is corrosive. Ordinary people are forced into a moral collapse just to breathe another day.

Gosi, played by Effiong with exhausting restraint, becomes the film’s moral centre. His attempts to reassure Derin feel increasingly hollow, as though he knows, before she does, that survival will demand the surrender of pieces of himself he may never recover.

The film’s emotional brutality peaks with a sequence too horrifying to summarise lightly. It is here that The Herd nails its thesis: insecurity is not only about physical danger, it is about the erosion of the soul. Every decision in the forest is a compromise. Every breath comes with guilt attached.

One of The Herd’s most urgent interventions is that violence is not ideological; it is transactional. 

Ibrahim Abubakar’s Yakubu is terrifying because he is impulsive. Rage drives him. In contrast, Halil operates with cold efficiency, while Habiba, arguably the film’s most unsettling character, moves with chilling intelligence and poise. Together, they form a hierarchy that mirrors organised crime more than insurgency.

This matters. The Herd insists that banditry is not cultural folklore; it is an industry. Rooted in greed, shielded by corruption, and sustained by systemic failure.

The bandits pray when convenient. They murder without hesitation. They negotiate percentages. They argue over loyalty. What Effiong exposes is uncomfortable but necessary: crime thrives because it pays.

The forest is not the only crime scene. The Herd extends its accusation to institutions that claim moral authority. A church sits next to hidden body parts. A pastor obstructs justice. Wealth, class, and culture weigh heavily on who deserves empathy.

Adamma’s storyline, her illness, her isolation, and her humiliating negotiation with in-laws are one of the film’s most devastating threads. 

Her Osu status is weaponised against her at the exact moment she needs solidarity. This is a reflection of our reality. In Nigeria, crisis does not suspend prejudice; it activates it.

Even when help comes, it arrives conditionally.

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Technically, The Herd is impressively controlled. Silence is used as aggressively as gunfire. Sound design amplifies panic rather than announcing it. The props, bloodied clothing, hacked body parts, and dirty weapons are disturbingly precise.

Language flows naturally across Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and English, reinforcing the film’s pan-Nigerian scope. This is not a story about “them.” It is about us.

Costume design acts as a metaphor. Derin’s wedding dress becomes dead weight, beautiful, symbolic, impossible to escape. By the time it is torn and stained, it looks exactly how the film feels: innocence ruined beyond repair.

Visually, the film resists clutter. The cinematography is composed and steady, avoiding needless movement or spectacle. It holds its ground, moving only when it must. Then, it draws you in softly and keeps you there.

Where the Film Stumbles

The Herd is not without flaws. The police investigation, while well-intentioned, lacks the urgency and complexity of the bandits’ storyline. There is an obvious inconsistency with the location here. 

For instance,  Habiba instructs that the ransom be dropped off in a location in Kogi, but Adamma dropped the money in Ekiti. 

Certain twists announce themselves too early and are never followed through. The church’s connection with the bandits is not further explored.

The final shootout leans briefly into cinematic choreography that clashes with the film’s otherwise raw tone. Some character arcs end too abruptly. 

Why This Film Hurts 

The discomfort surrounding The Herd is about recognition. This film unsettles because it does not invent fear; it documents it.

Because it refuses to cushion violence with metaphor, insisting that insecurity is not a regional problem, a religious issue, or a political bargaining chip, but a shared national wound.

The Herd is not anti-North. It is not anti-religion. It is anti-denial. And that is why it lingers. It is a tense, harrowing, and deeply necessary piece that forces Nigeria to look at itself without blinking.
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