‘On Becoming A Guinea Fowl’ Review – The Devastating Impact Of Unspoken Pain And Patriarchy

Trigger Warning: This review contains discussions of sexual assault, familial abuse, misogyny, and trauma.

Don’t ask for more. Don’t speak up. Keep your thoughts to yourself and let the men lead. Your job is to serve, to smile, to stay quiet. Don’t take up space. Don’t challenge the world or question the men. These rules aren’t just history—they’re alive today, shaping the lives of women like Shula (Susan Chardy) in Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. It’s a stark reminder that misogyny isn’t a thing of the past. It’s a daily reality, silencing women and keeping them invisible.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is not a film for the faint of heart, nor is it a film that offers solace or comfort. It is an unsettling exploration of the quiet, pervasive horrors of familial complicity, sexual assault, and misogyny—a film that leaves you aching, breathless, and haunted. Rungano Nyoni’s direction takes us into the intimate horrors of a family bound by silence, where trauma is hidden beneath layers of denial, tradition, and the expectation of compliance. The film cuts through the societal conventions that would have us look the other way, demanding we confront the gut-wrenching reality of abuse not just as an isolated event, but as a lifelong process of suffering, gaslighting, and invisibility.

At the heart of this devastating narrative is Shula, a young woman who is forced to reckon with the absence of the man who raped her—Fred (Roy Chisha), her uncle, whose death is as absurdly indifferent as the family’s reaction to it. There is no dramatic outburst, no weeping, no recognition of the horrendous violence he committed. Instead, we are faced with the numbing apathy of a family that refuses to confront the pain at the center of their lives. Fred’s legacy is not just one of sexual violence—it is one of collective indifference, a cultural silence that perpetuates the pain and suffering of those he has harmed. The true horror of this story does not lie in Fred’s actions, but in the way the family chooses to ignore, erase, and even protect the very system that allowed his abuse to thrive.

Shula’s grief is not her own—it is something to be shaped, molded, and used by her family. Her mourning becomes a performance, a mask she must wear to honor a man who never deserved it. She is forced to put aside her own trauma and fulfill the roles expected of her: prepare food, pick up relatives, grieve louder, perform sorrow for the sake of propriety. The demands placed upon Shula—requests that seem so trivial in their nature—serve as a cruel reminder that her pain is secondary, just another chore to be carried out in the name of tradition, normalcy, and respectability. There is no space for her to mourn authentically, to even acknowledge the enormity of what has been done to her. Instead, she must bury her emotions beneath the weight of family duty, her suffering rendered invisible by the constant stream of demands.

The real terror in the film is the way this family, particularly the women, collude in their own victimization. They do not challenge Fred’s abuse; they enforce it. They become the enforcers of patriarchy, ensuring that the system of silence and submission continues unabated. They pass down the expectation that women must serve, must suffer, and must remain silent about their pain. Fred’s widow, a child bride married off at the age of twelve, is blamed for Fred’s neglect, his actions reduced to a symptom of her failure to keep him in line. The women’s complicity is not just a passive act—it is active, cruel, and calculated. They do not mourn their abuser; they mourn his absence because his death threatens to unravel the very system that has upheld them, no matter the cost to the victims.

Nyoni does not give us the catharsis we may yearn for—the moment when the abuser is confronted, when the truth is revealed, when justice is served. Instead, she gives us the quiet, stifling silence of a family that refuses to face the truth. There is no grand moment of reckoning, no cathartic release. Instead, we are left to sit with the horror of what is left unsaid. This is not a film that offers closure; it is a film that leaves you suffocated by the weight of silence, and in doing so, it forces us to confront the unbearable truth: that sometimes, those who are supposed to protect us are the very ones who enable our suffering. There is no redemption in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl—only the hollow echo of what could have been, the painful realization that sometimes, there is no escape from the nightmare, not even in death.

What makes this film so devastating is that it presents a reality that is far too familiar—a reality where abuse is perpetuated not just through physical violence, but through the quiet complicity of those closest to the victim. This is a story not just of sexual assault, but of the misogyny and sexism that allow such violence to thrive. It is about the way in which family structures are often built on silence, on the unwillingness to confront uncomfortable truths. Shula’s pain is rendered invisible not just by Fred, but by her family—those who should have protected her, who should have stood up for her, but instead chose to preserve their own comfort and reputation. The tragedy of On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is that it reminds us of the extent to which society, tradition, and even love can be used as instruments of oppression. The quiet, unspoken cruelty of familial silence becomes its own form of abuse—one that robs the victim of the ability to heal, to speak, and ultimately, to reclaim their voice.

David Gallego’s cinematography heightens this sense of suffocation, immersing us in Shula’s silent suffering through shadow-drenched interiors and stark, isolating frames. The visuals create a world where grief and trauma hover like ghosts, lingering in the periphery of every moment. Light and darkness are wielded with quiet precision—flickering candlelight casting long shadows, dim rooms swallowing characters whole—reflecting the unspoken pain festering beneath the surface. The film’s muted palette and carefully composed shots reinforce the emotional weight of Shula’s isolation, making every frame feel like a visual echo of her grief, a testament to the horror of being unheard and unseen.

In its refusal to offer easy answers, in its unflinching portrayal of the ways in which families protect their abusers, Nyoni has crafted a film that is both heartbreakingly realistic and terrifyingly familiar. The horror here is not the violence itself—it is the indifference to that violence, the way it is normalized, concealed, and perpetuated by the very people who should be standing against it. The silence becomes the true monster, the true villain, and it is this silence that echoes long after the film ends.

Ultimately, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl does not merely ask us to face the horror of sexual assault—it forces us to confront the far more insidious horror of the silence that shrouds it. It unveils the quiet complicity embedded in every corner of our lives—the whispered secrets, the averted gazes, the unspoken norms that allow abuse to fester and thrive, unchecked. This is not just the story of one victim, but of the countless voices drowned out by the weight of a system that chooses silence over justice. This is a film that does not offer false promises of hope or redemption, but instead, it demands we sit with the searing truth of the pain that thrives in the absence of accountability. It is a call to action, a demand that we open our eyes to the horrors we’ve allowed to persist, even when the truth is too raw, too painful, and too deeply entrenched to ignore. The question is no longer can we bear it—it’s will we finally do something about it?

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is currently playing in theaters courtesy of A24.