Everything in Red Circle is intentionally designed to trigger a reaction. And even where the film veers into superfluous or overindulgence, as it occasionally does, those moments still land with a bang.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
It does not speak very well of the industry when the sum total of the commendation directed at a Nigerian film is that it succeeds at little things that Nollywood regularly fails at. But if that is what makes a good film in Nollywood, then Red Circle (2025), Rixel Studios’ very first feature film, easily qualifies for that honour, and then some.
A film that succeeds most of the time—that rare audacious Nollywood work that walks the talk, Red Circle is a delightful, yet thrilling, and sometimes, deliberately infuriating ride that sparkles with energy, chemistry, and intentionality.
It’s a crime thriller that uses its genre as a playground on which to explore the complexities of humans and their relationships, taking on universal themes of love, family and friendship, with the added context of privilege—how privilege protects and blinds, but also the kind of courage it takes to do what is right even if it takes away one’s privilege.
Folu Storms stars in the lead as Fikayo Holloway, a riot of a woman. Fikayo is a privileged young journalist with daddy issues even as her powerful father’s favourite child. She’s so used to getting her way that she’s visibly shaken every time she gets turned down. And she’s so good at taking advantage of her privilege that it’s easy to regard her as hypocritical when she puts on the garb of a social justice warrior and just downright silly when she thinks she can do without her privilege.
Her parents, played by Femi Branch and Bukky Wright (in a worthy return to the big screen), demand that she join the family business. But Fikayo wants to find herself. She wants to be a “serious” journalist, so she’s unsatisfied with her work as a fashion and lifestyle journalist in a media company under a boss (Patrick Diabuah), who forces her to relinquish her “serious” articles to a male colleague, Mustapha (Timini Egbuson). But she’d also rather have her brother (Shamz Garuba) take over the family business in her stead.
Fikayo lives in a wealthy part of Lagos, but her best friend, Venita (Omowunmi Dada) is a singer who lives in a lower-class neighbourhood and has to take loans and gigs at local clubs to provide for her mother and siblings. Theirs is a sisterhood that is made complicated by class and money. But with that rapport and eagerness to have each other’s back, they make it look easy.
It is that friendship that will eventually complicate things for the characters of Red Circle. Because when Venita witnesses a crime at the hands of a dangerous man called Mr. A (Debo “Mr Macaroni” Adebayo) and then finds herself in grave danger, Fikayo will risk everything and anything to expose the powerful crime syndicate that threatened her best friend, without regard for consequences.
And so, the question that Red Circle asks is not so much “How far can you go for ambition?” as “How far can you go for love?” It’s not quite marketed that way, but in Red Circle, love is the primary driving force, and the best moments are the ones where love is on display, whether platonic, familial or romantic.
In fact, there is a romance drama subplot involving Fikayo and a police officer named Kalu (Tobi Bakre) and a romance comedy subplot involving Venita and a local gang leader called Oshisco (Lateef Adedimeji), and it’s not an exaggeration to say that both subplots are more romantic and heartfelt than the majority of the mainstream Nollywood movies this year that have had romance as their main plot.
And it’s not just the love-centred moments that stand out. There are so many remarkable moments in this film—humorous, cute, emotional, suspenseful, heated, frustrating—that if you blink, you might miss out on something interesting. Even lines as simple as “Who the fuck is this guy?” from minor characters like Taye Arimoro’s Joshua, are delivered with such finesse that they turn out to be momentous.
Really, everything in Red Circle is intentionally designed to trigger a reaction. And even where the film veers into superfluous or overindulgence, as it occasionally does, those moments still land with a bang. It might seem like a small thing to focus on, but in an industry where shock value is typically just thrown in and not integrated into the story, Red Circle could very easily have been the regular action-heavy Nollywood film where things just happen thoughtlessly, back to back.
It’s almost surprising how well elements of the story are set up, and how explanations are written into the story without the explicit expositions that would ordinarily be expected from Nollywood. From little things like how Fikayo and Venita’s extremely different worlds could have possibly collided, to the bigger things like the many, many plot twists that are lined up in this film.
That Nollywood struggles with a plot-twist problem is no secret. Twists tend to pop out of nowhere, especially in the final act, and are so often jarring with no purpose other than an unhealthy obsession with the shock factor. But most of the time with Red Circle, even when it over-plays its hand in the third act, there’s groundwork done before the big revelations and surprises such that they’re never completely unexpected but the impact is felt all the same.
Akay Mason (Elevator Baby (2019), Bank Alert (2023)) hits a career-best in Red Circle, directing from a screenplay written by Abdul Tijani-Ahmed (Brotherhood (2022)) who co-produces with Nora Awolowo who herself doubles as cinematographer on the film.
Awolowo, recently nominated for Best Cinematography at the 2025 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards for her work on Lisabi: The Uprising (2024), delivers such radiant but also skillful cinematography, with shots carefully composed to capture the dynamics in relationships, and to establish power and powerlessness, agency and the lack thereof, only slightly hampered by the occasional improper headroom in a few shots.
Tijani-Ahmed’s witty dialogue features several one-liners that hit hard and stay with you, even if they sometimes hint at backstories or family dynamics—like a mysterious fortune inherited by the Holloways, or the source of the sliceable tension between the Holloway women—that don’t get fleshed out and, so, fall by the wayside.
The truth is, for all the intentionality of Red Circle, there are a few inexcusable blind spots, areas that are left unexplored in service of the shock factor. There’s too much ado about Fikayo joining the family business for the family business to be so vague. And there’s too much fuss about the all-powerful crime syndicate for the scope of their operations to be left to the imagination.
Plus, for a film with such a specific and symbolic title that has been emphasised and re-emphasised with the marketing, Red Circle surprisingly undercooks its symbolism. The film plays up the red circle motif in its setting up of its biggest revelations, even nearly choking on its use of the colour red, but then underplays it with the crime syndicate itself which the title presumably refers to (in a perfect world, we would come out of Red Circle with full clarity as to what the film’s title refers to).
There are two pivotal sequences where we realise the forces Fikayo is up against. The first starts off with a colourful party scene dripping in red, with immaculate blocking and a circular table. The second is a face-off sequence that features the film’s potent open-ended resolution (which I hope is just that and not an avenue for an unnecessary sequel), also with immaculate blocking and a circular image dripping in red.
But there is one scene that renders the picture incomplete: a gathering of the syndicate, most of whom don’t seem all that powerful, sitting around a table that gives off anything but a red circle. It’s a small detail, but in a film that would rather choose too much over too little, it’s difficult to ignore a missed opportunity such as this, and that scene, as fundamental as it is to the film’s entire essence, ends up sticking out like a sore thumb.
Still, for its imperfections—including noticeable sound editing flaws and a parallel editing choice that is bold and interesting but does not translate as smoothly as intended—it’s an admirable outing that radiates with energy and passion. Red Circle is an exciting watch, thoroughly engaging, well-acted, very clearly well-intentioned, and technically competent most of the time. It’s a feather in the cap for Nora Awolowo’s production house. I know I can’t wait to see what Rixel does next.
Rating: 3.8/5
(Red Circle opened in Nigerian cinemas on 6th June 2025 and will open in select cinemas in the UK on 20th June 2025.)
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a writer, film critic, TV lover, and occasional storyteller writing from Lagos. She has a master’s degree in law but spends most of her time reading about and discussing films and TV shows. She’s particularly concerned about what art has to say about society’s relationship with women. Connect with her on Twitter @Nneka_Viv