Thinline is a mirror of how deeply entrenched gendered assumptions still shape Nollywood storytelling.
By Joseph Jonathan
Thinline, directed by Akay Mason, opens with the promise of moral tension—the kind of slow-burn intrigue where virtue and vice are meant to collide in messy, human ways. A respected Pastor Raymond (Uzor Arukwe) crosses paths with a sex worker, Annie (Uche Montana), one reckless night turns fatal, and a murder mystery unfolds.
On paper, it is the sort of story that could interrogate guilt, faith, and hypocrisy with psychological depth. But Mason’s film does not simply fumble that opportunity; it weaponises its own blindness, turning what could have been a sobering reflection on consent and power into a sermon-shaped melodrama that dismisses the very violence it depicts.
At the centre of Thinline lies a moral paradox Nollywood has long refused to engage with — that men, too, can be victims of sexual violence. Pastor Raymond, the film’s protagonist, is drugged and sexually assaulted by Annie, a manipulative sex worker who later blackmails him with recorded evidence.
Rather than acknowledging this as assault, the film recasts it as an affair, a “moment of weakness”, and the seed of his moral downfall. Mason’s direction and Prisca Okeke’s script treat this violation not as a trauma but as a plot device, using it to justify everything from marital conflict to murder. The result is a film that not only erases a victim’s experience but reinforces the patriarchal logic that men are incapable of being violated.
This framing is not accidental; it’s symptomatic. Thinline is a mirror of how deeply entrenched gendered assumptions still shape Nollywood storytelling. The film’s language, visual cues, and even production design collaborate in this erasure. Annie is shot with the exaggerated allure of a femme fatale — the slow pans, the bedroom lighting, the camera’s hungry attention to her body.
Pastor Raymond, by contrast, is framed as a fallen hero whose undoing is lust, not violation. When the police question him, they refer to Annie as his “girlfriend.” When his wife, Damilola (Mercy Aigbe), discovers the tape, her rage is directed not at the assault but at her husband’s supposed betrayal. The film’s universe — its characters, its moral logic, its dialogue — all conspire to protect the illusion of male control.
It is this illusion that makes Thinline so dangerous. In a country where, until 2020, the legal definition of rape excluded male victims, the film’s refusal to name assault for what it is isn’t mere oversight, it’s cultural complicity. Mason’s film exists on Netflix, a global platform that shapes how outsiders perceive Nigerian cinema. What it communicates, loudly and without irony, is that in our stories, a man can only ever be the sinner, never the sinned-against. That the shame of being violated must be rewritten into the sin of desire.
This is not to say Thinline is without effort. It is, in many ways, competently made. The cinematography is crisp, the editing mostly clean, and the pacing keeps the viewer engaged through its first hour. Uche Montana is magnetic, giving Annie both menace and tragic charm. Uzor Arukwe carries the moral confusion of his character with impressive restraint. But craft without conviction only highlights the hollowness beneath. Mason’s film dresses itself as a moral thriller but refuses to wrestle with morality itself.
The screenplay flirts with themes of faith, redemption, and deceit, yet it never interrogates them beyond cliché. Pastor Raymond preaches “five red flags to look out for in a partner,” sermons that sound more like Instagram advice than spiritual counsel. His eventual “redemption” comes not from confronting his trauma but from surviving the narrative’s chaos. In the film’s moral calculus, sin is only sin when it is visible, a theology of optics rather than empathy.
And then there is the murder mystery that anchors the story’s latter half, or attempts to. Once Annie’s body is discovered, the film slides into procedural territory, trading its early psychological intrigue for an uninspired whodunit. The investigation scenes are clunky, the clues predictable, and the revelation of the killer unfolds with the subtlety of a Sunday school skit. What began as a character study collapses into convenience. Thinline wants to be Gone Girl (2014) but ends up like a Mount Zion production with mood lighting.
What is most frustrating is that Mason’s previous work suggested an awareness of genre. Elevator Baby (2019) and Day of Destiny (2021) were flawed but ambitious, showing an eye for emotional pacing and youthful energy. Thinline feels like a regression, a film that mistakes technical polish for artistic integrity. The cinematography, though sleek, often betrays the story’s tone; the repeated use of hotel interiors creates an emotional flatness that mirrors the film’s thematic shallowness.
But the gravest failure of Thinline remains ethical, not aesthetic. To depict sexual violence and erase its victimhood is to perpetuate the very silence that sustains such violence. When Pastor Raymond’s assault is reframed as infidelity, the film teaches audiences that male pain is either a joke or a moral weakness. When Damilola’s reaction is reduced to jealousy, it reinforces the notion that women’s anger must orbit around men’s choices, never the structures that oppress them both. And when the police dismiss coercion as romance, the film echoes a justice system that routinely fails survivors, male or female.
There is a fine line between exploring morality and exploiting it, and Mason’s film tragically stands on the wrong side of that divide. Thinline had the potential to be a landmark; a film that confronted religious hypocrisy and sexual violence with empathy and courage. Instead, it becomes an exhibit of Nollywood’s recurring disease: moral cowardice dressed as moral commentary.
The tragedy of Thinline is not that it was made poorly, but that it was made thoughtlessly. In trying to moralise sin, it ends up sanitising abuse. In trying to tell a story of redemption, it denies the possibility of justice. And in a culture already reluctant to hear men’s pain, silence can be the loudest violence of all.
Rating: 2/5
Joseph Jonathan is a historian who seeks to understand how film shapes our cultural identity as a people. He believes that history is more about the future than the past. When he’s not writing about film, you can catch him listening to music or discussing politics. He tweets @Chukwu2big.