The press release for horror film Dachra states this is Tunisia's first ever horror film. Whether it is the case or not, this witch based horror (alleged to be based on true events), written and directed by Abdelhamid Bouchnak is certainly the first Tunisian horror to be reviewed on this blog. The film won the Scariest Film Award at The Overlook Film Festival.
Having now watched this I would say there are some uninspired moments, but this can't be accused of not having atmosphere in spades.
Yassmine (Yassmine Dimassi), Walid (Aziz Jebali), and Bilel (Bilet Slatnia) are three journalism students whose college professor has tasked their class with creating a documentary about a local topic of interest. Laid back Walid tells his friends about the story of a strange woman who was discovered in the middle of nowhere with her throat slashed some twenty five years ago. She was subsequently taken to a local mental institute where she has since gotten a reputation for being a witch. The trio decide this would be the perfect story to cover for their project, and with Walid being friends with one of the nurses at the institute, heads there to see the patient. This eventually leads to them discovering the location where the woman had been originally discovered, and decide to head there to do some filming. They stumble across a strange village deep in woodland that wasn't marked on any maps. Mostly populated by cowled silent woman, the jovial sole male village leader convinces the three to stay, due to time getting late in the day. The longer they are there, the more the three begin to suspect something very wrong is going on, Yassmine in particular is shocked to discover that life long nightmares she has had of a woman in black appear to be somehow linked to this bizarre cultish place.
The story for this film felt very found footage like, I am glad it didn't go in that direction, instead being traditionally filmed, as this allows all sorts of camera shots to be used. The story was interesting, I liked how it seemed Yassmine was caught up in events before the film had even really started. Later reveals I had expected, but I was still pleased to see them occur, it gave the whole movie a bit more of a The Wicker Man vibe, with me not shaking the feeling that the three had been lured to the village for some nefarious reason. I thought the protagonists were a decent group of characters. They are forever bickering with each other, but this came across as natural. There were some moments that became amusing due to the friendly insults the characters share. This is in Arabic, but the subtitles were forever easy to read and translated well. Other characters all served purposes well, but I did feel The Shining style subplot of Yassmine's uncle spending much of the film making his own way to the village was a bit dull.
The horror here mainly comes from the atmosphere, the village felt like an unsettling place, with the creepy non-speaking villagers like something out of Resident Evil 4. There were some tries at creating horror that were very generic, a few lame early jump scares. The atmosphere of the village was very well done, a grimy poor looking place where strange lumps of meat are hung up everywhere. From the prologue in which a young boy is sacrificed, it is clear that something obviously evil is going on at the place. I liked the drip feed of information the protagonists get, the best part being when Yassmine comes into possession of a journal. It did the gradual unpeeling of the story satisfying. With all that this does get right, it is a bit of a slow burn, it doesn't get dull over the course of the one hour fifty five minute runtime but I would say that not too much really happens over the course of the movie. I was also unsure of the very abrupt ending, not completely convinced that worked for me.
Dachra was bleak and cruel, both things that are most welcome in a horror. There were occasional moments where nothing too interesting was going on, though I did think the village setting was very effective. With normal feeling protagonists, the horror sparsely explained, and a great setting, this was a good film, only let down by a few cliche horror moments. Dachra came to the streaming subscription platform ARROW on May 16th.
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