Dachra (2018) - Horror Film Review

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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What Is Buried Must Remain (2022) - Horror Film Review

The Elias Matar directed and co-written supernatural found footage horror, What Is Buried Must Remain has a few firsts for me. It is the first Lebanese horror film I have ever seen, and it is also the first film I have seen that has its primary language spoken as Arabic. In fact, this is the first film of any genre I have seen that uses both those two things. Much like the optimistic protagonist Lara states, people are just people wherever you go, and so this found footage horror followed a familiar path to others before it.

Lebanese teenager Lara (Asma Jumaa) has teamed up with two older friends, refugees Alaa (Hassan Alkhlefe) and Shadi (Hamza Zahab) to help them with making a documentary. There is an old French colonial house in the area which is reputed to be haunted, the plan is to spend a night in the place looking for evidence of ghostly activity, with the hope their documentary will be successful enough that they will be able to leave their poor existence behind them. Once at the house things start to go wrong, with it evident that the place is legitimately haunted, both by hostile and friendly ghosts. With the place seeming able to transform itself around them, the three friends soon become lost within it, and must work together to try and find a way to escape.

I was pulled in to begin with thanks to the setting. Little I have seen of Lebanon over my lifetime has been good, mainly from news reports, so it was fresh to see a country from the perspective of normal people who live there. The majority of the movie takes place inside the colonial house, but the introduction sequence with the friends travelling there was very interesting to watch. I thought the house looked fantastic, the dilapidated building was dirty and full of trash, with it easy to believe that ghosts could actually be there. In my head, this was like if The Blair Witch Project had entirely been set in the building the hapless heroes find themselves in at the end, with some ghostly possession straight out of The Shining thrown in for good measure.
Much of the film is found footage, with one sequence around the halfway mark that became a traditionally shot one, not feeling out of place. It makes sense the characters would be filming everything as most of this takes place at night in a building that has no power, and so characters are using the light from their phones and cameras to see their way around the place. At just over an hour and a half long, this did feel like it dragged ever so slightly. It does really pull itself together for the final act, and while the twists and turns are something I have seen before, I felt they were executed effectively here.

The core protagonists were all different, Lara was someone who you couldn't help but like due to her optimism, typically the characters of a found footage horror are older than she was, and have some obvious flaws. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her due to how nice she was shown to have been. Shadi is in the middle, a bit of a coward, who doesn't really have strong opinions, happy to side either with Lara or Alaa depending on the situation. Alaa was the most complex character here, with it heavilyself implied that he has had a bit of a dark past, something alluded to when the character sees visions of him as a masked soldier executing someone. A definite angry streak in him, giving him a bit of a wildcard feel. Some of the side characters also shone, especially Dahlia Nemlich as the ghost of the French wife of the original owner of the house, Mariam Fontaine, I loved her creepy smiles and stares. I also liked Ahmad Alrefai's Abdallah; a junkie that the trio find squatting in the building, and who provides some context for exactly what is happening.

What Is Buried Must Remain was surprisingly familiar for me despite the new and unknown setting. While scenes of characters wandering around the building in first person could have been edited down somewhat, especially in the middle act, I thought the setting looked great, and the well told story was handled brilliantly, even if there were few real surprises. Also, while the use of CG was obvious, it was implemented well, with it not distracting in the slightest. What Is Buried Must Remain is available to view on EST/VOD/SVOD, with it coming to other streaming platforms such as Indie Box and Tubi from 26th November.

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Beyond: Two Souls (2013) - Horror Videogame Review (PS3)

David Cage is a man who splits opinion of himself. Some see him as a great artist whose visions are unique while others see his games as pretentious drivel. I enjoyed the flawed Fahrenheit despite the lame final part. I really enjoyed Heavy Rain that played out like a Saw film, and now here is Beyond: Two Souls that stars Ellen Paige as Jodie who is linked to a ghost; Aiden.

There game plays out over Jodie's life, from when she was a small child and taken to a research facility run by fatherly Nathan Dawkins (Willem Defoe) to her time in the C.I.A and then her life after that when the American authorities are hunting her down. Events do not play out in chronological order and skips wildly about her time line. So one level may see you playing as a little girl unable to sleep at night while the next level may have you as a grown up Jodie in a war zone. The skipping around does help create some questions that make you want to discover what has happened but also makes everything feel disjointed.

I am not actually sure if Beyond can be classed as a game, I feel it is far more of an interactive novel. In previous games of this type there were definite fail states, the character you controlled could die resulting in a restart, here though it is impossible to die. The many quick time events the game revolves around are actually quite meaningless with the only result of failing a QTE being a slightly different scene playing out. I really saw this after having taken a break of nearly two months, I returned and failed all the QTE's in what I  thought was a high threat scene but the game still carried on regardless. For the most part you slowly walk your character around looking at objects and doing these quick time events. There are not even any puzzles to solve, it is all story.

The main plot line is not great at all but Beyond excels at telling little stories that almost feeling like episodes of a TV show. Some are all action, others not that interesting, while others are very much horror based and get to be almost scary in places (almost, not actually scary). A solo trip into a government base where a condenser has gone into meltdown (a condenser being a gateway between our world and the spirit world) was quite creepy with the solitude of making your way down through a destroyed facility and then battles with dead bodies resurrected with demonic souls. Another tale that has Jodie arriving at a remote ranch owned by a Native American family whose property is attacked by a vengeful spirit each night was fantastic and by far the highlight of the game for me. Helped in massive part by the amazing soundtrack that never falters throughout the whole experience, the music is the glue that holds Beyond together, it would be far less without it.

Now here comes the curse of writing a review in two parts being as it is a few days later and my memory has gotten fuzzy, bear with me. The graphics for Beyond are the best on the PS3, even better than the gorgeous The Last of Us, there is a lot of variation as well with scorching heat, pouring rain, blizzards and trips to various locations around America and some around the world including an effective visit to a war zone that ends with your character being pursued by literally everyone in that place, frightening! For the most part the chaff that usual fills these types of games (brushing your teeth in Heavy Rain springs to mind) is gone with QTE events falling into mostly interesting activities.

The real twist with the game is that you control not only Jodie but her ghost Aiden as well. A hit of the triangle button puts you in a first person viewpoint from the ghost, your able to float around interacting with limited points of interest in order to help or hinder Jodie. Aiden can possess people, smash objects and throw them around, he is able to see the memories of people and also can kill people. These abilities while very fun to use are limited to a handful of things in each section but are empowering. One scene sees you as Jodie surrounded by SWAT and Police, controlling Aiden you are able to cause utter chaos and panic as you fling Police cars around and kill with abandon, kind of reminded me of the fantastic bit in Terminator 2 outside the Skynet offices. Aiden's powers are so limited in these scenes that it really makes you wish you could carve your own way rather than be hand held.

I had a lot of fun with Beyond: Two Souls but it barely qualifies as a game and the overarching plot is a bit flat and unexciting while the end section is just dreadful and reminded me of a game from the later 90's. If your after an interactive story then there is enjoyment to be had here and some of the more horror based sections are pretty darn great, but weaker ones (such as preparing for a date with a guy I personally hated but Jodie liked) are pretty much equal to the highs. Still with great graphics and music, not bad acting for the most part this is an experience, just don't expect to actually care about anyone. I admit I spent the game making Jodie's life as miserable as possible just because I was neutral to her plight!

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