Director – Judith Audu
Cast – Yemi Blaq, Judith Audu, Femi Branch, Ifu Ennada, Odera Olivia Orji, Oludara Egerton-Shyngle, Mawuli Gavor, Oluwanifemi Lawal, Bolaji Ogunmola
Year – 2017
Obsession juggles in a dizzying array; a star studded cast and a thinly written script based loosely on the Beyoncé/Idris Elba 2009 flick of the same name. The result is a mirage that struggles to meet its gargantuan ambition.
Obsession opens rather mischievously with Aret (Ifu Ennada) posting photos of her favorite actor in her bedroom with suspicious naughtiness. The story progresses and closely follows two couples – each with a sex deprived and workaholic spouse. In the relationship between Tricia Davis (Judith Audu) and Bayo Davis (Yemi Blaq), Tricia is the work obsessed wife while her husband (a famous actor) spends most of his time at home looking after their son. Tricia decides to get the assistance of a nanny in Aret (Ifu Ennada; who by the way passionately embodies her character) an obsessive fan of Bayo.
Then there is the switcheroo relationship between Tega Umukoro (Femi Branch) and Ene Umukoro (Odera Olivia Orji) where Tega is the workaholic and his wife, who although works, feels deprived of spousal attention. This is until she meets a young man, Kamar (Mawuli Gavor) at a bar one night. The outsiders in Kamal and Aret develop affairs with the deprived significant other of each marriage; satisfying sexual desires and providing erotic based pleasure whilst displaying strong obsessive-controlling demeanor (twisted OCD, huh?)
A jamboree of predictable events at best, end in Aret holding a gun to the Davis’s child when Bayo tries to end their affair and Kamar kidnapping the Umukoro’s son when Ene walks out of _their_ relationship.
A big part of this movie that deserves critical acclaim are the sumptuous erotic scenes. The conventional, boring and honestly cringe-worthy excuses for erotic scenes that are usually accompanied with Nollywood movies are replaced with something out of a racy late night French movie with a spice of elite decency. The storyline isn’t blurred or lost in this hue as the story uses these erotic scenes to further drive depth to its shaky plot.
The actors and actresses in this movie mostly gave stellar performances save for Judith Audu whose acting came off a bit unnatural and forced as she didn’t appear to wholly embody the role.
Although the movie starts off nicely with the writer critically examining each story arc with the eye of a watchmaker and paying attention to detail, the story changes halfway in shoddy fashion and appears as though the writer either ran out of ideas or abruptly upped and left the script, thus ending it on a flat note and leaving much to be imagined by the viewer.
This earns this movie a 4/10 on our scale.
This review was prepared by Daniel Akindayo
