Starring: Nse Ikpe-Etim, Frederick Leonard, Nancy Isime

Synopsis:
A married couple unable to conceive a child receives an offer of surrogacy from the wife’s sister, unaware of her sordid intentions.

Review:
After five years of marriage, Amara (Nse Ikpe-Etim) had not been able to produce a child with her husband, Ikem (Frederick Leonard). Life seemed to take a turn for the worst when she had to have an emergency hysterectomy.

But not all was lost because Amara’s sister had just returned from a six month stay in jail and offered to be their surrogate. Ikem had misgivings at first but then conceded to his wife’s desire to accept the offer. The decision proved to be a mistake when the sister’s true intention was finally unearthed.

Let’s Talk. The Surrogate. We’ve all seen this type of storyline before where a hired surrogate loses all professionalism and develops feelings for the father of the child, the baby, or she just goes plain psycho. More often than not, it’s all of the above and this movie is a remix of the premise with a twist. 

Normally the surrogate is unrelated to the couple such as in movies like “Mary the Prostitute” and countless others in Nollywood and Hollywood. In this case, the surrogate was the wife’s sister so a little sibling rivalry was stirred in.

This website came to terms from day one that most movies are not original. See Movie Ratings Page for more on this. Most movies are “recycled” with originality making an appearance every now and then. If we rated movies based on originality alone most movies would fail. So we review movies based on content and take it from there.

In essence, this story was somewhat predictable because we knew something foul would be up with the surrogate but writer, Vivian Chiji, had a few tricks up her sleeve that kept it interesting.

Of course there were a few nuisances. For instance, the scene where Amara conveniently left town leaving her husband with her sister all alone in the house. Obviously something unscrupulous was about to happen – no surprise there. The upside is that there were moments of tension although the movie could have used a little more suspense.

Performances. Nse Ikpe-Etim brought her “A” game to a character that clearly had an emotional investment in starting a family. Frederick Leonard seems to play the loving husband/covert cheater quite a bit and he tackled both sides of the character well.

Audio and video were up to snuff.

“The Surrogate” reminds us to reconsider those we trust. It wasn’t bad if you can overlook its borrowed premise. RECOMMEND