#dachra

dachra (2018)

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)

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.

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.