16th Anniversary

There couldn’t possibly have been a way to anticipate the degree of mind-f***ery that this movie brought to bare (excuse my language). However, as the events in this movie continued to unfold, my jaw kept expanding and expanding that by the end I reached a point of surrender.

16th Anniversary is the story of a wife who looses her husband the day after their 16th anniversary in a road accident as he was on his way to a “business trip”. After his death, she finds out that he had a whole other family in a different state. He had been married to his other wife for 30 years and she has two children with him. As she prepares for his funeral, she comes face to face with her husband’s other life and multiple revelations surface.

At the end of this movie, it would be hard to argue anyone else but the writer as king of the show. Honorable mentions do however go to the music director for that all encompassing score and Eucharia Anunobi for pulling us into her confusion. Hers is a character with supposed psych issues who claims to be normal. She fluctuates between moments of clear psychotic problems and moments of normalcy and even the character is a bit confused herself. However, Eucharia manages to pull us in so much so that we are also confused about whether or not she is crazy.

Then there is Mercy Johnson and no one does ‘craze’ like MJ. The only problem is that MJ also only does craze like MJ. Mercy has been doing the same rendition of madness since day one – the Tourette Syndrome version where she keeps twitching left, right and center. Asides from that, Mercy carries her own in this movie and carries the audience along the journey. .Then there’s Jemima Osunde and Hauwa Allahbura as the daughters. Simply the casting combination makes me want to take the casting director out for coffee or something – my treat. These girls do more than justice to their characters. They breathe air into them and give them life and a personality while offering a rendition of the twins that is memorable.

The story really is king in this movie and when you think you have it pegged it just turns the knife a few more angles and leaves you with your jaw dropped like what the actual eff?