User reviews

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.

I have seen thousands of horror films, but I do not recall a single one which begins, in quite a matter-of-fact-way, with the decapitation of a child (not explicitly shown, fortunately). That really got my attention.

A group of three film students visit a mental hospital in order to film a patient who is considered a witch, and based on a clue she provides seek out a remote hamlet. Once there, they find it to be inhabited by very strange residents and end up facing a horror far beyond anything they imagined...

It turns out that DACHRA, evidently Tunisia's first horror film, is very good at amplifying horror by presenting it in a mundane way, yet at the same time it oozes with atmosphere. Judging by the scarcity of horror movies which are successful in their attempts to do that, this is a credit to the film.

Also, I loved the feistiness of the female leader of the group during the interview with the hospital director. Unfortunately, by the end of the movie, her character has undergone an arc for the worse. In fact, the development of the characters and the poor choices they make are the weakest aspects of the movie. They fail to provide critical information to each other, they seem unreasonably unconcerned with the increasingly unsettling events they witness until there is no room left for ambiguity, and shortly before the end there is a twist which seems too implausible because it was not set up properly (for example, the twist contradicts the seeming surprise of one of the characters when he discovers they have been filmed while sleeping).

These flaws do not completely mitigate the strengths of the movie, they just reduce what could have been a great horror film to merely a good one. On a final note, DACHRA feels strongly like a found footage (FF) film without being one. As a FF fan, I appreciated the ambience.

Totally, the movie is good. I liked the story and the cast's acting but a point to review is the useless use of the bad words that was not necessary.

Horror films aren't expected to be highly rated, and this wasn't a bad effort in this genre. The one fault I would say is the character development. What little there is of it just made the characters seem like they don't really get along very well, but they are supposed to be close.

Also, as pointed out by many reviews, it's just lazy to have the characters in a horror film always make poor decisions, or be oblivious to danger.

If the characters would have been better developed, and seen as getting along very well along with some jovial insults, instead of constant annoying bickering, the twist at the end would have had more impact.

Witchcraft is a thing in Africa, and it is scary. Tunisia is in North Africa, so it means something different to them. In the West, this type of thing is usually portrayed as devil worship.

All the other aspects such as atmosphere and cinematography were very good. I'd watch this film maker's next effort, he has promise.

The concept was good but nothing new, most turkish horror movies rely on the same pattern. A slow pace direction with less stupid characters, might make it worth a watch.

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.

Given the review score, I went into this movie rather intrigued, but there are essentially no original ideas here. Every plot point and revelation is one you've seen before, and nearly every character is dumb to a point that not even the suspension of disbelief can justify it. The film's cinematography is noteworthy but brought down by the color grading and lack of budget for real sets. I did like the grandfather character, as each of his scenes were unique and striking compared to the rest of the by-the-numbers story beats and visuals.

And just to take up the last few characters to meet the review criteria, what kind of genius character would put their face near a pot of offal and hooves and expect any other smell beyond utter wretchedness?

Also, the number of perfect scores for this movie strikes me as very suspicious.

Excellent movie. Very tribal references very different from what we used to see In that sort of movies.

Yes I know and you probably know, that in order for most horror movies to work, the characters can not be smart when it comes to decision making. The characters here though seem to go out of their way to always decide the most blatant illogical and just plain bad decision that is at their disposal.

It's cringe-worthy to say the least. And even the twists cannot save this. Not to mention that especially the one towards the end is just completely ... out there. It takes everything you've seen and shoves it down the chimney ... or drain or whatever else makes sense to you. There is some slight atmosphere this can create which is the only reason I don't rate it lower ... but overall this is reaching and almost an insult to any movie and horror afficionado

Nice one as a 1st experience I love it Beautiful secenes Love Tunisia

Ok, so it is different cinematography, but how different seriously now? I do get it, we have to encourage foreigners to do their best and show us their vision, which usually differs from the common Hollywood productions, or in my case African vs European. But all in all, for me, it was a familiar production, one very easily to anticipate, the only struggle I had with this movie was trying to understand the characters: all they do is fight yet we suppose to somehow feel they are a team.

After you watch this you will realize that not only it was very difficult to root for them, but they did the very absolute in taking the wrong decisions throughout the entire movie. So if I can not relate to them or even sparkle some empathy, why even go with these characters? After this first set back, we have the plot itself: well clearly not original in any way, I do understand the themes explored here, but the development is weak, far stretched and annoyingly boring.

For the first Tunisian horror ever, I will grade it a 4 thanks to the effort and courage into making it, but that is it. It showed nothing new, different, it was a movie I've seen it 1000 times only longer and more frustrating. A lot of the scenes could have been cut off and if the movie would have proved to be a huge success, perhaps added in the director's cut. But they have no place here, and as the run time is close to 2h, perhaps less quantity and more quality. Also...the plot itself is weird and non sense at time, as a lot of the things presented on screen either make no other appearance or no difference later on.

Anyway sadly I can not recommend it whatsoever as it is a difficult watch, even for those that want to put an eye on a different type of cinema, simply expect nothing than a movie which will seem to last for at least 3 hours.

Cheers!

Very imoressive work done buy the movie director and the crew ,as a first work in this genre in tunisian cinematography , i'm hugr fan

The first Tunisian horror movie has only added to the surplus of bad horror movies of the world. Nothing new to see except the language and culture. They even take it a step further than a lot of other horror movies in having the main characters completely unlikeable and stupid. I haven't seen such an empty headed helpless female character except in the older movies when women were all portrayed as dumb bimbos flailing around screaming all the time. Hey Tunisia! Stay out of the bad horror market! It already full!!! You get an extra star for gore.

I enjoyed the different cultural aspects of this Tunisian film. I liked the cinematography as well. The foggy settings lent a surreal feel at times. Ultimately though, the characters were not particularly well developed or likeable. In fact, quite the opposite. I tried hard to like it but overall can only recommend it if you want to check out a derivative foreign film or are bored. It's not painfully bad, but it's not all that good either. Just an hour and a half of arguing and bad decisions with a little gore and a predictable plot mixed in.

Incredible production for a first time horror movie from Tunisia. Creepy, scary, gory and horrifying. The fact that it was based on true events makes it even more chilling. Definitely recommend.

I had with this off and fast forwarded halfway through because of the terrible acting and plot holes, but I suddenly spotted something different just before the end and lo and behold, it actually made sense!

Really gory and hard to watch but it is horror and I guess to be expected...

This movie is absolutely a must watch.

The movie is so unique and the screenplay is very original making it, along with the fact that is based on real events, feels like watching a real life footage. Not to mention of course the incredible performance of the actors which has contributed more to the integrity of the events. The plot and the events are very unexpected and surprising which leads probably to alot of mixed emotions during the movie. The sound effects are so realistic, the quality of sound is perfect along with the video quality. I really recommend everyone to watch it otherwise u'll be missing alot.

An out of the box Tunisian horror movie, very unique and well executed, the scenario,the acting and the direction were amazing, keep going !

As a purveyor of culture portrayed in cinema, the events of this village of souls are very realistic, albeit historically of origin, a deeply buried and forgotten experience. We humans are not born with a conscience, we acquire it from our mentors. Acquisition of cultural tradition is an evolution from generation to generation, similar to a desire to communicate in a written language, an evolution from images to alpha/numeric representation. Dachra is a film lending us a fascinating view of a particular cultural tradition lost on our current insensibilities. We humans are not born with a conscience; we acquire it from our mentors. Freed from mental prejudice, an honest interpret the content and acting of this Tunisian film is a realistic portrayal of human kind's footprints in the melting snow.

It's a gem. Worth watching and reading the subtitles.

This movie that i recommend is one of the greatest horror movie that i watched very original and based on a profound research , technically is pretty much perfect combined with a good script and a great shots and plans on the characters.

Very original movie that is uncommon of other ones. It makes you wonder what will happen and you will never guess, doesn't stop surprising you with huge elements at the very end.