Once upon a time, I recapped an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity. The article’s popularity made me turn 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.
Today, I will be recapping the 2003 Nollywood drama, Emotional Crack, starring Ramsey Nouah, Stephenie Okereke Linus, and Dakore Egbuson-Akande.
That wig on Dakore’s head looks like a small rodent.
Long before the movie, Men in Love, Nollywood began its insane homophobic agenda with this movie. It starred Ramsey Nouah as a man trying to free his wife (Stephenie Okereke Linus) from the evil clutches of a home-wrecking lesbian (Dakore Egbuson).
The movie starts with Chudi (Ramsey Nouah) coming out of the shower in a towel. He’s wiping himself off when his wife, Crystal (Stephenie Okereke Linus) comes in and tries to initiate sex. You can tell that their marriage is a mess because Chudi is like:
Crystal sets up a candle-lit dinner so she and Chudi can celebrate his birthday when he gets back from work. What she doesn’t know is that Chudi is at the office spending time with Camilla (Dakore Egbuson-Akande), a woman whose snail he’s eating on the side.
Chudi is running late so Crytal calls to ask what’s taking him so long. Chudi, who had already promised to stay over at Camilla’s house that night because he FORGOT THAT IT WAS BIRTHDAY THAT DAY, starts to rush home when Camilla asks for a goodbye kiss. That kiss must’ve led to something else because he gets home THE NEXT MORNING looking like this:
It was either this or Beyonce’s “Partition”.
We get a deeper look into how messed up their marriage is when Crystal, understandably pissed, is like:
And Chudi responds by punching her in the face repeatedly. In typical abuser fashion, he comes back a while later to apologise, promising never to do it and feeds her breakfast like that’s supposed to change anything.
Later that day, Crystal goes to hang out with friends, wearing giant sunglasses to hide her bruises. When she takes them off, her friends scream and ask if her husband has been using her for WWE practice again. Crystal lies that the bruises are the effects of an allergy but her friends aren’t buying it.
Crystal is tired of being a housewife so she gets a job as an accountant. Because she didn’t tell him about it, Chudi beats her until she ends up in the hospital with a bandage around her head and a pack of Don Simon’s Sangria on her bedside table.
Chudi comes to the hospital with a gift and apologises for knocking her unconscious and leaving her lying in a pool of blood. He says he’s made an appointment with a pastor because he needs help.
A pastor. Lol
Chudi sees the pastor and sounds like he really does want to turn his life around but in the very next scene is shown on a date with Camilla. He tells her that he’s taking Crystal to a party he was supposed to attend with Camilla and Camilla is pissed. He walks off while she’s throwing a tantrum and she’s like:
While dancing with Crystal at the party, Chudi sees Camilla grinding on another man and goes to tell him to keep his hands off his girlfriend. As this is happening, Crystal starts dancing innocently with a random guy. Chudi sees this and speeds across the dance floor to slap her so hard the entire room — including Camilla — goes:
Men are trash.
Crystal goes to the bathroom to cry and Camilla follows to comfort her and they become friends. An unspecified amount of time later, Crystal goes to visit Camilla at her house. After eating inappropriately-sized pieces of chicken with rice, Crystal tells Camilla all the gory details about her marriage to Chudi. The entire time, Crystal is talking, Camilla looks at her like this:
When Crystal is done with her depressing monologue, Camilla gives her lingerie as a gift. Crystal is too excited about being given a gift to wonder why this person she doesn’t even really know is gifting her underwear. She eventually comes to her senses and asks why. That’s when Camilla says this:
Crystal immediately goes home and thinks about all the nice things Camilla has done for her while a generic early 2000s Nollywood soundtrack plays in the background. As she’s eating what’s supposed to be pizza but really looks like bread and egusi, Camilla calls.
Eventually, Crystal gives in and starts smooshing genitals with Camilla, and it turns out that lesbian sex was all Crystal needed to build her confidence. The next time Chudi tries to hit her, she stops him and says she won’t go down without a fight. Chudi is like:
Crystal confides in her twin sister about her affair with Camilla and it does not go down well.
And that wasn’t even all of it.
Crystal starts feeling guilty and attempts to end things with Camilla. Camilla threatens to out her, even going as far as sending a letter to Chudi’s office. Crystal goes to Camilla’s house to tell her to stop being a crazy bitch but gets seduced into one last roll in the hay. Things go south when Chudi shows up.
This is when Camilla reveals that she did all this as revenge for Chudi breaking up with her. She seduced Crystal and called Chudi to come over so he’d catch them in the throes of passion. Chudi is upset that Crystal cheated on him and throws her out of the house, which is INSANE BECAUSE HE CHEATED ON HER FIRST.
However, Camilla says she really has fallen in love with Crystal and stalks her begging for her love. Camilla eventually loses her mind and goes to Crystal’s house with a knife.
Chudi and Crystal’s twin sister happen to show up at Crystal’s house during this attack and Camilla threatens to stab all three of them.
But in a not so shocking turn of events, she ends up stabbing herself in the stomach and dies.
