Director: Desmond Elliot
Producer: Desmond Elliot
Script: Chiji Vivian
Cast: Mike Ezurounye, Iyabo Ojo, Efe Irele, Moses Samuel
Year: 2017
Human beings have an unstable relationship with money; sometime, money can ruin a person’s happiness, while other times it can create this happiness. Money has a hold on human beings. It controls several things that happen in the world and unfortunately, we let this happen—I mean we have no option but let it happen. In Mourning Karen, money disrupts a happy family as their happy lives get turn apart by the death of the wife and mother, Karen (Iyabo Ojo). She also dies on the day of her birthday, but is it all a scam?
Derrick (Mike Ezurounye) falls in love with a difficult female client, Karen (Iyabo Ojo) and eventually they get married. They have a good marriage and have a smart son, whom they both adore. Years later, Karen dies on her birthday. A surprise celebration is set up in her honor but instead of her arrival, Derrick is met with the bad news of the death of his wife. There was a car crash and Karen was found with a man who is not her driver. This opens a can of worms. Derrick finds heart shattering secrets relating to his wife and unfortunately, she is unavailable to answer these questions but her diary gives some answers.
Mourning Karen is quite intriguing, from the first scene we see a family anticipating the arrival of Karen and unfortunately, they welcome bad news. The death of Karen is one that the viewers are eager to see resolved and while these happens slowly, the writer makes sure to keep us intrigued by having Kamsi (Efe Iriele) a woman scorned and who rejoices over the death of Karen. Karen had been involved in a sexual affair with Kamsi’s husband. Eventually Kamsi learns to forgive and when we concentrate on her story, we have two perspectives to the story. On one part is a heartbroken Derrick who finds out the true character of his wife after her death and on the other is Kamsi who has anticipated the death of her husband and his lover Karen. Mourning Karen projects greed and how trust is a tricky business. As human beings should we trust easily or should we allow doubt guide our judgment of the things that happen in life. This is a very important question that Mourning Karen lets us reflect on.
Iyabo Ojo and Mike Ezurounye do a good job of portraying Karen and Derrick. Desmond Elliot does a good job of directing a film that makes us question trust and even though some scenes are questionable, the best parts of the film come from featuring an impressive child actor as Karen and Derrick’s son. He makes us laugh, cry and he should book more roles in Nollywood.
Mourning Karen earns a 7/10 from Xplore
