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dachra (2018)

5th of 31 horror movies i’ve never seen in my halloween movie list!

#dachra #dachra 2018 #dont watch this. or do and just appreciate walid. but dont watch this.#gifs #mine #31 for 31

Today was work and...a single, entire audiobook. I started it when I got into the studio and I listened to the epilogue while making dinner, like, eight hours later. And, like, pretty sure that's how the rest of the month is going to go because I'm incapable of working ahead or working consistently, so now I feel like I gotta do as much as possible every day or I'm fucked for my last event, and I hate being in this position and yet I can't work any other way.

Oh, and Carrie was the audiobook for today. I gotta get more lined up, but everything I want to listen to, I already have on hold.

Dachra (2018)

Oh, thank god it's a journalism class and not documentary film making, or we'd have to put up with the student found footage aesthetic.

#movie funtime #dachra

Dachra (2018)

Yasmine is more prepared to survive horror movies than anyone else. Every beat where she is offered an alternative, she just wants to get the hell out. Good instinct. The alternative, chosen or otherwise, doesn’t lead anywhere good in this sort of situation. Uncertainty and confusion reign supreme here as a group of journalism students go beyond the pale to research a story. It’s certainly not bland. But what they get is a tale of terror quite unlike anything they are prepared to cover. Men unwilling to tell the truth. Women unwilling to speak. It’s all about nondescript meat, and precious little told otherwise.

The cinematography employed is seriously impressive for a first effort in the genre. After the group are led into the depths of hell in a remote village, the night of uncertainty is captured in pools of light, deep shadows, and flashes of strobelit nerves. It’s moody and paranoid, the danger present for the character palpable to the viewer as well. Nobody came screaming out of the darkness, but just how dangerous the moment was for Yasmine was still clear to the viewer. Equally frightenening was the erratic behavior of the child in the Don’t Look Now rain jacket; nothing short of the avatar of evil in any given moment.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'Mongia'.

Asymmetrical framing of faces in a scene.

Witchcraft is mentioned.

The investigation hits a dead-end.

BIG DRINK

A nightmare sequence begins.

Obviously bullshit excuses are thrown around.

#drinking games #dachra #abdelhamid bouchnak #horror #horror & thriller #tunisian cinema #cannibal witches

DACHRA (2018)

Filled with a deliberately off-kilter style of framing and oppressive lighting and atmosphere inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER, you'd be surprised at how familiar and oddly comfortable writer/director/producer Abdelhamid Bouchnak's 2018 film DACHRA can be, despite being pretty much the first of its kind to come out of Tunisia. While the subject matter is anything but cozy, DACHRA takes structural notes and story beats from horror history to weave a darkly intriguing tale of witchcraft and other more culturally contentious topics. Even if you can see some of its turns coming way out in the distance, you still ultimately haven't seen anything exactly like it.

Yasmine is a student of journalism tasked with taking on a unique documentary subject for class—anything is fair game outside of the Tunisian rebellion, which, as the professor reminds everyone, is well-trod ground—and with the help of the two bumbling, bickering bros with which she's partnered, she lands on the case of a deeply disturbed woman named Mongia. As the old tale goes, Mongia was found at the edge of the road with her throat slit 20 years ago, miraculously still breathing, and has been in the care of a local asylum ever since. She's considered among the most dangerous patients, such that the director of the facility won't even acknowledge her existence. With some clumsy negotiation, the trio is eventually able to take their equipment deeper into the asylum to interview Mongia. Speaking of well-trod ground, you'll recognize this as the quintessential horror film depiction of mental care; screams echoing off the walls and bug-eyed patients practically licking their lips at presence of their new visitors.

Shortly after they enter her cell—where Mongia sits in the shadows, cutting an imposingly enigmatic yet still clearly human figure—the violent whisperings of Mongia's behavior are confirmed. She may not get her teeth on Yasmine or her friends, but soon after they leave we learn why she's notorious for taking a bite out of her caretakers. Is she really a "witch" or merely a representation of the oppressed, or both?

Thankfully, DACHRA isn't that interested in overtly answering many of the questions it supposes. The setting's promised threat is fulfilled when Yasmine, Walid and Bilel end up stuck in a remote village (hence the title of the film, which translates to a remote village or hamlet). The horrors, while never terribly over the top or shocking, ramp up from there. As we barrel toward the climax there's also a major revelation, but again, DACHRA doesn't hammer it home. We don't need a lore dump in the third act, we just need to keep chugging along through this grim scenario and see it through to its inevitable conclusion.

DACHRA ticks a lot of the horror trope boxes over the course of its 114-minute journey, from bickering and obnoxious leads to stupid decisions and provoking music cues. It still manages to eke out some standout imagery in the process, especially during one of Yasmine's key late-story visions, where shrouded women stand silhouetted and spaced apart right outside of the house they're using in the village. The ending is suitably haunting, as well, and the fact that it was apparently made for somewhere in the range of US$80,000 is undeniably impressive. It might seem dismissive to call this the best Tunisian horror film ever made given the playing field, but unlike the purportedly true stories on which its premise is based, there's no room to argue against its veracity.

#dachra #tunisia #horror movies #witchcraft #films #abdelhamid bouchnak #dekanalog

Dachra (دشرة, tunisian, 2018)

The story in itself is pretty obvious, but man do I love discovering non-western horror films, and their take on "classical" tropes. The almost never-ending banter between the main characters is stellar.

#dachra #دشرة #horror films #horror #film review #yasmine dimassi #aziz jebali #bilel slatnia