Today, I will be recapping the 2017 Nollywood movie, Alter Ego.
Once upon a time, an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity trended on the internet. I did the dirty work of actually reading and recapping it. The article was so popular that I decided to make my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To “, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc.) and recap them for your pleasure.
You are going to angrily flip a table when you find out why this is the movie’s name.
Alter Ego was released in 2017. It marked Omotola’s return to the big screen after a few years away and was heavily marketed using clips from the movie’s cringe-worthy sex scenes. It didn’t click at the time but I’m willing to bet that this movie was inspired by the TV show, How To Get Away With Murder.
So you can see why.
The movie starts at a courthouse in Lagos, which is abuzz with reporters publicizing the proceedings of the high-profile sexual assault case going on inside…
…to the eager general public.
This immediately lets me know that this movie takes place in some alternate universe’s version of Nigeria where cases of any kind get this much coverage or any at all.
The case is about the sexual assault of a teenage girl by a rich and powerful man. Barrister Ada Igwe (Omotola Jalade Ekeinde), a human rights lawyer, is defending the girl. When it seems like the rich man is about to escape prison time by claiming he wasn’t in the country when the alleged assault happened, Ada stands and up screams:
She then provides receipts that he actually was in the country at the time of the assault, sending him to prison. By the time the opening credits roll, it’s been established – by the reporters repeating it every 6 seconds – that Ada Igwe is a well-known human rights lawyer who has dedicated her life to getting justice for the victims of sexual assault. It’s also shown that when the law fails, Ada is willing to do anything necessary to make sure sex offenders get their comeuppance, one way or another.
On her way home from the court, it’s revealed that Ada is a nymphomaniac when she decides to have a genital meet & greet with her driver in the back seat of her car WHILE STUCK IN TRAFFIC.
When they get to her house, she gives him a three-month salary advance and fires him. Apparently, her M.O is to sleep with her employees and then pay them to leave when she’s done. She does this with her gardener…
…and her SISTER’S HUSBAND, Daniel (Kunle Remi), who she hires to work for her law firm after he loses his job. They’re driving to work together one day when she’s like:
And so she does in the very next scene:
He catches feelings for her immediately.
Ada acknowledges that this is an incredibly shitty thing she’s doing but keeps slobbing on his knob anyway. She begs him not to tell her sister, Zika.
Meanwhile, a politician named Timothy Ighodaro (Wale Ojo) takes an interest in Ada.
He befriends Ada, claiming to also be a human rights activist and even accompanies her to a few IDP camps to deliver provisions. After a while, they become close and start sucking each other faces.
One day, Ada finds out that one of the teenage girls she’s defended in court may, like her, have a sex addiction. She is horrified by this, and after taking the girl to a therapist, tearfully reveals to Timothy the reason she’s so passionate about fighting for human rights! She was molested at the age of 13 by a teacher back in secondary school, causing her to create an ALTER EGO to hide her sex addiction, which she believes was caused by the abuse. Timothy is sympathetic, and this conversation makes Ada decide to get a handle on her sex addiction. She fires Daniel so she won’t be tempted to bump genitals with him anymore.
During one of Ada’s visits to an IDP camp, she spots a girl named Aisha (Emem Inwang) who looks bruised up and deathly terrified of something/someone. Ada tries to find out what’s wrong but whenever she tries to strike up a conversation, the girl runs off screaming. Ada realises that Aisha is afraid to talk in public so she has Aisha KIDNAPPED from the camp and brought to her house.
After calming herself, Aisha explains that the reason she’s constantly terrified is that Timothy Ighodaro has been sexually assaulting her for months and has threatened to kill her if she tells anyone. Ada is sceptical, but Aisha is like:
Aisha produces receipts in the form of pictures that her brother took of all the time Timothy has come to the camp for nefarious reasons. Distraught and confused, Ada goes to get advice from her sister, Zika, about the situation. She falls asleep in Zika’s living room, which leads to Zika seeing the following texts from her husband to Ada.
Zika is fucking furious and throws Ada out of the house. Having lost the trust of her only remaining family member and confidant, she wanders the street barefoot and has the obligatory “main character showers depressingly to show that their life has fallen apart” scene.
Ada confronts Timothy with the pictures and he doesn’t deny it. He says he expected she’d understand because, like her, he too was molested as a child and only rapes people as a side effect of his abuse. When she lets him know that her explanation makes no fucking sense, he threatens to out her to society as a sex addict. She doesn’t back down and takes him to court to get justice for Amina.
The attorney goes on to claim that Ada is using this court case (and by proxy, Aisha) to get back at Timothy for breaking up with her after finding out about her sex addiction. The next thing you know, Timothy’s lawyer starts bringing witnesses to the stand to defame Ada’s character. First up is Zika, who is still pissed as hell that Ada slept with her husband.
Up next is Daniel, who is still upset that Ada will no longer let him eat her hairy snail.
This goes on a WHILE and the judge just allows it until Ada is like:
She drops proof that Timothy molested Aisha and many others in the IDP camp and he gets carted off to prison for 14 years.
A few weeks after the case, Ada tracks down the teacher who molested her as a teenager. She finds him blind, bedridden from multiple illnesses and living in a swamp. She whips out a gun from her purse and goes to shoot him in the face as revenge but changes her mind, deciding that life is already kicking his ass for his sins. she emerges from her molester’s swamp to find Zika and Daniel waiting for her. They all quietly point guns at each other.
And just as the screen goes black, we hear a gunshot.
We never find out who gets shot.
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