Dachra (2018) Arrow Player Review
Set against the backdrop of contemporary Tunisia, journalism student Yassmine and two classmates set out to solve the cold case of Mongia, a woman found mutilated 25 years ago and now imprisoned in an asylum 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 home to a cult. When Yassmine discovers Dachra’s secrets, she must fight to escape alive.
Writer-director Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s first feature film is also reportedly Tunisia’s first horror film. Opening with the overused ‘based on a true story’ claim DACHRA has three youngsters – two men and a woman – toddle into woodland in search of a witch, sounds familiar right, but unlike THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT this is not a found-footage flick. With impressive photography, courtesy of director of photography Hatem Nechi, DACHRA certainly looks the part, its very atmospheric and, for the gorehounds amongst you, occasionally gruesome.
Unfortunately, the film is overlong, lacks originality, resorts to well worn genre tropes and consists of silly people making stupid choices. Anyone in their right mind would have done a runner very quickly from the spooky village the threesome visit but no, not in DACHRA, the youngsters stay there no matter how unsettling things become for them. There is a twist that comes late in the day that jars as it fails to sit well with an earlier scene where one of the two guys discovers that someone was filming them as they sleep and wielding a large knife whilst doing so.
DACHRA, winner of the Scariest Film Award at The Overlook Film Festival, is streaming on ARROW from 16th May