PENANCE (2025) ; MOVIE REVIEW .

INTRODUCTION

Penance (2025) is a Nollywood movie that was written and directed by Awal Abdulfatai Rahmat . Featuring Wale Ojo as the main character, who was called Majekodunmi Alowonle and Uzoamaka Onuoha as Alice Martins, who's also the main female character.And Greg Teddybear Ojefua as Detective Festus Obosa.

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SYNOPSIS

Penance tells a story of a young girl called Alice, who happens to be a corper, she influenced her posting to a law firm, owned by Alowonle to execute vengeance/revenge for her deceased roommate back in college, who was raped and sexually assaulted by Alowonle, a man she saw as a mentor. Alowonle raped her, disgraced her, and due to the disgrace she committing suicide.

Alowonle is an advance , influencial and successful man who lacks integrity and takes advantage of younger girls in his firm, who sees him as a mentor. The consequences of his past mistakes was after him and he wasn't aware till the end.

Alice is really a smart character, she knows Alowonle would never decline a sexual advance, so she went to his office and offered him her body willingly, poured her blood on the sofa after having sex with him and left her bottons in corners of the room. She did all these when there was no staff at work, including the secretary.
When she got home, she inserted a bottle inside her vagina, to create wounds in her vagina walls and went crying to her sister who is a lawyer, and immediately got to the hospital and finally to the police. Her sis and the detective fought the case to the end.

That was the beginning of Alowonle's struggles, with Detective Festus, apparently Alowonle have had an affair with all his female staffs, even his lawyer couldn't trust him.

It was during a search at his office by the detective and the police officers, that they found the evidence left by Alice, Alowonle was dumbfounded and had to face the wrath of the law and that was the end of his career.

The last scene was when Alice visited him in jail and reminded him of her friend, and how she killed herself because of him and that was when that Alowonle realized that it was his past mistakes that came hunting him.

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THEME AND ANALYSIS

• Penance is a story of revenge, crime, sexual harassment and pain.

• Penance has a theme of vengeance, and this is portrayed by the female main character, it took her years to revenge her roommates death, who she described as a naive and innocent girl, who thought she had met a mentor, not knowing he was a monster.

• Also there's also a theme of sexual harassment. In our society today, people use the opportunity and respect given to them by younger girls to take advantage of them. The movie shows that girls can be sexual harassed at their work places. Alowonle was also harassing other girls at his office, regardless of the fact that he had a wife and children that wasn't based in Nigeria.

• The main character, Alowonle lacked integrity, that was why setting him up for destruction wasn't difficult.
  If he had resisted from sleeping with Alice, all these would have been avoided. Integrity and self respect is very important in the life of an individual.

• The part of this movie that was a shocker to me was the part Alice inserted a bottle to injure the walls of her vagina, that was really scary, I understand she did to trigger blood and also to get a doctors report but it was really extreme.
  Also when she attempted suicide to make the situation worse, and at the end we the audience realized it was for a friend, that is really applauding.

• And the hilarious part of this movie is that I never rated the Detective Festus Obosa , considering that he is always featured in comedies, I thought he wasn't going to take the report at the station serious and the fact that he was always eating apples, even in serious moments.

SUMMARY

I love the suspense and the plot twist in this movie, I wasn't sure he raped her until it was uncovered, because he was really defensive, and apparently he didn't rape her and I never knew it was a revenge plan, until the end.
I would rate this movie an 8/10.

It's an interesting movie, I will highly recommend for movie lovers.