Sugar Sisi

At the end of this movie all I could say was …whut. It was jarring and I totally did not expect it to be so brutal from its innocent synopsis. The ‘revenge/torture porn’ genre is a genre that I avoid a lot simply because I cannot handle it and if you are like me, gentle soul, give this one a very wide berth. The saddest thing is that they weren’t even graphic instead allowing you to fill in the gaps with your imagination which just makes it worse.

In line with films such as ‘Jennifer’s Body’ and ‘I spit on your grave’, the plot is not original but then the woman gets raped gets revenge through brutal ways is literally  the bread and butter of the genre. This film also borrows elements that one might consider unsavoury about this genre, the titillation of rape being at the forefront where the act is seen not as the evil act that it is but rather as a way to show some skin and have a half-naked woman running about. The film spans two parts but dedicated too much time on what it clearly wanted to be tense moments thus neglected character development. The only thing you knew about the characters was that one had a boyfriend and that was it and apart from the sympathy you feel about the act itself you don’t really care about the characters as much as you could. It tried a little too much to be thrilling meaning that there were overlong scenes with ‘scary’ music being played which admittedly worked but only for the first few minutes. I also think that it would have done the whole atmosphere some good if it had been shot at night because the filmmakers did not have the expertise to make it in the daylight.

Amanda Ebiye failed to impress here but it wasn’t really her fault, there is nothing that she should have done to add flavour to her character as she only had to go through the motions. The bulk of the acting was left to Mercy MacJoe, who was patchy. It was a meaty role and sometimes she just fell short, granted she wasn’t bad but I couldn’t help wishing they had switched the roles. But it was an okay performance. The area boys were suitably menacing even though I felt it could have been better. In summary, the acting did not carry this film at all.

The props and graphics were low-grade( they pixelated some dude which made me worry for a while because since he didn’t need to be butt naked then what was happening) and I found the costuming a bit of a let-down. It completely puts you out of the film when someone is supposed to be raped but they are wearing shorts. It was a very glaring error because it could have been resolved just by making the actresses wear skirts. Alternatively they could have made use of discretion shots instead of being inaccurate and inconsistent.

In conclusion, if this is your sort of thing then it’s a Nigerian take on it, if it is not then leave it be. It was pretty average except one can see how good it would have been had it been handled with more finesse.