Dachra

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

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.

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

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.