The Herd Review: A Wedding-Day Kidnapping Thriller That Hits Close to Home

Is The Herd good?

Yes, with reservations — it’s a confident directing debut that trades genre thrills for something closer to social reportage. Daniel Etim Effiong, stepping behind the camera for the first time while also starring, builds real tension out of a scenario that’s uncomfortably plausible for Nigerian audiences: a bride and her wedding party kidnapped by men posing as herdsmen on the way home from the reception. Genoveva Umeh carries much of the film’s emotional weight as the bride whose wedding day becomes a fight for survival, and Effiong’s own restrained performance keeps the film from tipping into melodrama. Where it stumbles is pacing — several critics have pointed out that side plots pile up without fully paying off, and a late shootout swings into a stylized register that clashes with everything that came before it.

What is The Herd about?

A newlywed couple and their wedding party are ambushed and taken hostage by armed kidnappers just after the ceremony ends. What starts as a straightforward abduction plot splinters into something more layered: among the captives, old family tensions and class resentments surface, while the kidnappers themselves are shown fracturing over money, loyalty, and how far they’re willing to go. The film moves fluidly between English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin, which grounds the story in a specifically Nigerian reality rather than treating the kidnapping-thriller premise as a generic backdrop.

Should you watch The Herd?

Yes, if you want a thriller that’s engaging with a real and current crisis rather than using kidnapping as pure genre spectacle. It’s not a comfortable watch, and it isn’t trying to be — the film has been described by critics as refusing to soften its subject matter, which is both its biggest strength and the reason some viewers may find it heavy going. Fans of tightly plotted thrillers might be frustrated by the number of threads it tries to juggle, but anyone interested in what Nollywood can do with a topical, high-stakes premise will find plenty to admire, especially in Umeh’s performance and the film’s refusal to offer easy resolutions.

How does it compare to other Nollywood thrillers of 2025?

It’s more ambitious and more socially engaged than most of the crime thrillers Nollywood released this year, even if the execution doesn’t fully match the ambition. Where a lot of recent Nigerian thrillers lean on twists and shootouts to carry the runtime, The Herd is more interested in what kidnapping does to the people on both sides of it — a choice that occasionally slows the momentum but gives the film more to say once the credits roll. It landed at the top of Netflix’s Nigeria chart shortly after its digital release, suggesting audiences responded to that seriousness even where some critics wanted tighter editing.