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 insane 1999 Nollywood movie titled, ‘End of the Wicked.’
“End Of The Wicked is a Nigerian horror movie that tells the story of how the forces of darkness destroy good people and how they are being saved by the power of the Almighty God.”
– The film’s Wikipedia page
Whoever wrote that used so many words to say nothing. Also, that part about “gripping and suspense-packed depictions and screenplay” is a fucking lie.
I don’t know if a lot of people already know this but ‘End of the Wicked’ was written & produced by pastor, self-proclaimed witch hunter, and all-around threat to children everywhere, Helen Ukpabio. Like writing and funding this piece of insane propaganda wasn’t enough, Helen Ukpabio also cast herself in it, as the person who comes in and saves everyone from the clutches of evil.
Legend has it that she’s a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan.
The film starts with this message:
I have a feeling that this isn’t true.
What follows are the opening credits, superimposed over a montage of witches flying to a meeting that’s taking place during the day for some reason.
I think homegirl here looked so stressed out because she was running late.
They all arrive at their meeting point in the middle of the bush. The camera pans to each one and I need you to see what they all look like.
It truly made me feel some type of way that the movie’s makeup artist thought that burn victim = witch.
Their leader, Beelzebub (Alex Usifo), shows up looking like he just got done giving head to someone on their period.
He instructs them to “change into their glorious bodies” and they all turn into different animals. After that, he gets to the main agenda of the meeting: the coven’s blood bank running low. He says that this is unacceptable and gives them 24 hours to refill the bank.
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
The movie uses night time aerial shots of Lagos as transition scenes and this kills me because there’s no light and you can’t see shit. We’re shown an older woman lying in her bedroom with her eyes wide open. When the clock strikes 1 AM, she astral-projects out of her room, causing 2 children somewhere in the house to wake up screaming.
Which makes their mother, Stella (Hilda Dokubo), rush in and be like:
They tell her they were having nightmares of “someone pressing them” (sleep paralysis demon representation matters) so she calms them down, assuring them that their father will solve the problem. Their father, Chris (Charles Okafor), calls a family meeting the next day. The astral projecting woman from the night before is present. It’s revealed that she’s Charles’ mother and lives with him and Stella. This is how the meeting goes:
Charles: “What’s this I hear about oppression and nightmares?”
Stella (hisses): “Charles. I don’t see you being serious about this issue. Your wife and children’s lives are in danger and this is all you have to say??”
Charles: “What the hell are you bitching at me for? I’m addressing the issue, aren’t I?!”
Charles’ Mother: “It’s enough, my son.”
Charles: “Shut up, mama! It is not enough! Stella refuses to let me be the man of the…”
Which didn’t even surprise me. Because why did either one of them think a family meeting would solve the problems of nightmares?
At the next coven meeting, one of the witches announces that she’s brought someone looking to join. When Beelzebub finds out the new recruit’s name is Godwin, he smirks and says, “God win indeed” and the witches laugh.
I’m like:
Because you just know that Helen Ukpabio thought she’d struck comedy gold with that line.
They make him drink blood and prove his loyalty to the coven by destroying the business of a woman named Stephanie. Stephanie is a nurse and is giving a patient a chloroquine injection when the new recruit appears in the room (in the form of an owl) and causes the patient to die.
Charles’ mother, who is a member of this coven and goes by the witch code name Lady Destroyer, tells Beelzebub that she wants to make her son suffer for — I shit you not — the crime of taking care of her every need. Beelzebub agrees and sentences Charles to spiritual life imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Charles and Stella’s daughter is about to get her very own storyline. She begs for puff puff from a random kid on the playground and then later that night, has her spirit (and the spirits of other kids who ate his puff puff) summoned by the random kid with the chant:
Yes. This is the origin of that story we all heard growing up.
He flies off with them to Beelzebub’s coven meeting, where all the witches are announcing their plans to ruin Charles’ life. It’s revealed that the puff puff kid is the head of the coven’s kid’s department. All the kids are immediately initiated.
Unfortunately for Stephanie the nurse, her son is one of the coven inductees. He tries to tell her this but she dismisses him. The next night, when her husband is asleep, the kid witches show up in a random man’s bedroom and fuck up his spine by literally eating it like rice.
Then they eat his eyes in the spiritual realm…
…making him blind in real life.
Everything in Charles’ life turns to shit (not literally) and the coven tricks him into thinking it’s Stella’s fault. Out of nowhere, he decides to go to a native doctor for help and his mother promises to take him to one she knows. He doesn’t even ask why she just happens to have a native doctor on speed dial.
When Charles’ sister, Tina, calls to let them know she’s returning to Nigeria with her new husband, their mother tells Beelzebub to remove Tina’s womb, fry it, and and hang it at the coven’s meeting. Why? Because she can’t stand to see her children happy.
I’m just like:
Oh, there’s more.
Lady Destroyer somehow takes things up a notch and asks to be bestowed with a penis so she can have sex with Stella every night. Beelzebub tells her to slap her thigh 3 times. She does and grows a huge schlong.
Things get even worse for Charles when their son dies. Up next is the family’s housemaid who dies from electrocution and this leads to the police arresting Charles like it’s his fault. The housemaid’s parents arrive and initially want justice but ask for N500,000 when the police inspector advises them to settle the case out of court. This is 1999 and Charles doesn’t have that kind of money. So this happens:
I can’t tell you how hard this made me scream.
Meanwhile, Stephanie the nurse has lost her job. Frustrated, she tells her husband that she’s sick of his shit (being blind) and announces that she’s leaving. When her husband and son beg her not to leave, she knocks her husband to the ground and tells her son this to his face before leaving:
In despair, her husband stabs himself in the stomach with a knife…right in front of their kid.
And the kid, who caused all this with the powers he got from demon daycare, just stands there and watches his father bleed to death.
Charles’ sister, Tina, arrives from…the abroad (they literally didn’t bother to name the country) with her husband, Emeka, and Lady Destroyer carries on with her plan to ruin Tina’s life. First, she destroys the engine of Emeka’s new car.
Petty.
Then uses a dog to spiritually steal Tina’s womb.
And hangs it in a tree.
It’s at this point that Pastor Priscilla is introduced, played by honorary Winchester sister, Helen Ukpabio herself. She literally shows up at their house out of nowhere and asks them to join her in prayer. Stella gives her life to Christ.
Charles and Stella’s remaining child, Mercy, starts exhibiting rebellious behaviour. Most people would say it’s because she lost her only brother and never processed the grief properly. But Pastor Priscilla declares that it’s signs of witchcraft and asks that Stella take Mercy for deliverance. (She was right but still…) Stella prepares to do this but Lady Destroyer finds out and kills Charles to throw her off.
At Charles funeral, some old guy insists that for everyone to be sure stella isn’t responsible for Charles’ death, she has to drink the water used to wash his corpse. Stella is like “Fuck no!” and the crowd starts screaming for her to drink it. Pastor Priscilla tells the crowd to shut up and promises to find Charles real killer in a couple of days.
Lady Destroyer FINALLY decides to kill Stella but unfortunately for her, Stella and Pastor Priscilla are in the middle of a hot prayer session. Lady Destroyer’s magic backfires, causing her to confess to all the shit she’s done in front of a mob, who proceed to beat the shit out of her. A dog bursts out of her stomach and she dies, looking like a wrecked pinata.
