Dachra (2018)

• Year: 2018
• Released: 06 Jun 2020
• Country: Tunisia
• Adwords: 2 wins & 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8987922/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dachra
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Arabic
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Horror
• Runtime: 114 min
• Writer: Abdelhamid Bouchnak
• Director: Abdelhamid Bouchnak
• Cast: Yassmine Dimassi, Hela Ayed, Aziz Jebali
• Keywords: cannibal,

	6.2/10
	59/100
	86% – Critics
	75% – Audience

Dachra Storyline

Yasmin, a Tunisian journalism student, and her two male friends set out on a university assignment to solve the cold case of Mongia, a woman found mutilated 20 years ago, now imprisoned in an asylum and suspected of witchcraft. As they pursue their investigation, the three friends stumble into the archaic and ominous world of Dachra, an isolated countryside compound filled with goats, silent women, mysterious drying meat and steaming pots. They are welcomed to stay overnight by the jovial yet menacing cult leader, but when Yasmin discovers Dachra’s secrets, she must escape before she gets hurt.

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Dachra Movie Reviews

Dark, real and haunting.

Wonderful movie.

The dark scenery and the general theme of this movie are just epic, pretty dark and uncomfortable. Visually immersive and captivating, the camera skills are something between video games movies style and solid original cinematography.

The plot is well written and have good twists, love it.

I highly recommend it, a unique Tunisian horror movie.

Different … but Unfortunately Not Quite Different Enough!

Dachra is unique in that it is the first Tunisian horror movie I’ve seen and particularly in the first couple of acts, that in itself is almost enough recommendation to see the film. It is rather intriguing watching this slow-building, creepy piece, whilst at the same time hearing lines of idiosyncratic dialogue such as “May the blessings of Allah be upon you.” Director/writer/and just about everything else except popcorn vendor Abdelhamid Bouchnak, should be congratulated over this, his debut feature. The next best thing I can say about Dachra is that Bouchnak excels at building an atmosphere of eeriness concerning the story of a trio of journalism students, attempting to build a video news story assignment around a gruesome criminal case over 20 years old. Unfortunately in presenting his finished product, one finds that he hasn’t been able to restrain himself from overindulging his borrowing of too many tried and tested horror tropes.

Visually, the film initially proves interesting, with Director of Photography: Hatem Nechi demonstrating he is more than prepared to adopt a variety of unusual angles to lens proceedings, using a very much desaturated black-and-white look to underline the stark, bleak nature of the story. But one does eventually tire of massive numbers of shots approached with Dutch angles, with quite a few seemingly deliberately out of focus. Towards the end of the film we even get the good old, nausea-inducing, spinning head in the kaleidoscopic panel, just for good measure. It’s almost as if director Bouchnak was apologetic over not presenting a found-footage film and decided to dazzle us with visual tricks as the next best thing.

Character wise it’s very much run of the mill. A trio of loud, almost obnoxious and therefore largely unsympathetic personalities who consistently make (really) dumb decisions and thus, unsurprisingly end up in a life and death situation in a rural village with the title name. I should add there is a very late, very contrived twist to somewhat explain their constantly, chaotic, unrealistic behaviour, but I just didn’t buy it and it really didn’t make a lot of sense. The central protagonist Yasmine transitions from attempting to be portrayed as a plucky, feisty heroine, to an annoyingly, blubbering, screeching damsel in distress, all in the space of a few seconds. And I still haven’t worked out how her grandad, who has a tenuous connection to the main thread, knew she was in Dachra. I don’t recall her, or anyone telling him.

Narratively, Dachra feels about 15 minutes too long. Stuff occurring in the village just seems to be repeated (literally) ad nauseam. One feels the conclusion is just dragged out too far and this, combined with the illogical actions of our three main characters, brings a frustrating end to proceedings, rather than a frighteningly good climax.

Still, even though I found Dachra ultimately unsatisfying, I would like to see some follow-up work from Abdelhamid Bouchnak. The guy definitely shows some promise. 5.5/10.

Eh, not 10/10. But worth a watch.

Don’t get me wrong. Dachra is something different. But once you get past the somewhat original story with unexpected twists, you are still left with the cliche and clueless characters who bicker incessantly, and who can’t make one proper lifesaving decision. I had heard it described as extreme, but it was mild compared to a lot of horror films I had seen. There were definitely some eerie moments that made my skin crawl, and I loved the shooting style. But it was disappointing going in with expectations. Worth a watch. Form your own opinions.