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“Achoura” now available on Prime Video!

Broken by witnessing the kidnapping of their friend Samir, Ali, Nadia, and Stephen’s lives are plagued by the past and turmoiled in the present as adults. When Samir is miraculously discovered alive, a realization of truth begins to flood back into their memories as the kidnapper’s intentions were to stop a malicious, child-devouring entity by stowing the demon away in Samir’s body as an encapsulating prison. The demon, known as the Bougatate, uses the joyous celebration of the Muslim holiday Ashura to snack on beguiled youth and is now free to feed upon ripe, happy children once again, especially Ali and Nadia’s young son. The four friends must band together and seek to destroy Bougatate on his own turf, a decrepit rural French house engulfed in nightmarish lore.

Nothing says originality and mind-broadening concepts more than when international filmmakers weave the fabric of their folklore, the sequin of traditions, and the raw materials of cultural customs into their fabrication of creativity. Director and co-writer Talala Selhami takes us on that very journey through Morocco with a tale based off the concepts of a shifty Djinn-like urban legend terrorizing children of the Ashura celebration with a shadowy, jaw-opening and jowl-extending monster devouring children like a snake in this 2018 released supernatural, child-be-vigilant thriller, “Achoura.” Selhami’s sophomore film comes 8 years after releasing the cutthroat hiring practices of Corporation authority over the applying individual in “Mirages.” The French-born director helms a script penned by Jawad Loahlou and David Villemin showcasing the horrors of loss, sometimes forgotten, amongst the Arab-Berber population. The half-crescent coast of Casablanca becomes the main shooting location for the Moroccan-French co-production under Moon & Deal Films, Overlook Films, Orange Studio, and Black Lab VFX produced by Selhami and Lamia Chraibi with executive producers in Caroline Piras (“Among the Living”) and Rachida Saadi.

“Achoura” has been described as the Moroccan “IT” where four childhood friends reunite to face a preadolescent predator known as Bougatate. That analogical sentiment is extremely on-point to the detriment of “Achoura’s” North American release; I, myself, before reading any other external comments, had thought “Achoura’s” story walked the same line as the 2017 remake and strongly resembled Pennywise in intentions and, in some ways, specific ways he – or rather it – tricks and consumes children. The four friends are also similar to certain characters in the Loser Club, but the Sofiia Manousha is the least affected by her past, reimagining what happened to her friend, Samir (Omar Lotfi), as nothing more than being an abducted whim of a pervert’s fantasy. Samir is the younger brother to Nadia’s estranged husband Ali (Younes Bouab), a brooding, sleepless detective ceaselessly on his brother’s case as he dives deep into old investigative interview footage and cigarette packs he continuously bites the filter off of each cancel stick. The pain Ali bottles up is complete poison wonderfully conveyed as well as the interpretation of trauma from the last friend of four in painter, Stephen or Stéphane as the character is credited. Played by the Spanish born Iván González, whose worked on a pair of intense thrillers – “The Divide” and “The Crucifixion” with director Xavier Gens, Stephen singles himself the only person that remembers what actually happens as González glosses the artist with starry eyes and a verbally shaken recollection of monstrous images. The one performance thought to be the weakest link was Omar Lotfi’s Samir, an imprisoned man-child imprisoning a demon with him, and Lotfi’s infantility as a grown man freed from confinement and a demon crossed too intractable goofiness, leading the Samir away from being a sympathetic character into more of a cartoon of one. The cast is relatively comprised of the four friends with minor parts here and there in roles from Mohamed Wahib Abkari, Jade Beloued, Abdellah El Yousfi, Celine Hugo, Gabriel Fracola, Mohamed Choubi, Noé Lahlou, and Moussa Maaskri as The Guardian incarcerating Bougetate inside Samir, who we assume is the same boy from the film’s prologue setup but never actually verified.

While “Achoura” draws many comparisons to “IT,” Selhami sepulchers itself into an overwrought, yet hugely overworked subgenre of shrouded gangly presences lurking from the darkest corners of the room to bring antagonism toward children. “The Babadook” comes to mind with the manifestation of grief descending upon a single mother and her child. Same theme can be extracted from “Achoura’s” grief and trauma over the loss of their friend and how they represent the condition in different ways: Nadia chooses to reimagine the event to a safer, saner memory, Stephen expresses his horror through painting, and Ali’s guilt drives him to unhealthy habits in looking for his brother. The Bougatate is akin to a pedophile robbing children of their innocence, a motif that extends from the very beginning of the story with a preteen boy expressing his affection for a girl his own age before Bougatate seizes upon them. Their innocent and charming clandestine affair is kept from her betrothed husband, who’s creepily decades older, in a mind-boggling and unpleasant idea of children arranged marriages that sets the misguided tone for a sordid underlayer that sparks Bougatate’s resurgence into the world. Though I like the tone of the film albeit a vague carbon copy of others like it, what I find to be tone deaf is the often clunky special effects surrounding the entity’s polished look. One attribute belonging to Bougatate is the legion of flies that constitute his form in what has diminutively become just a bunch of nano byte specks moving in menacing unison and swallowing (or being swallowed) anything in their path. The non-linear format that double culminates the unravelling in present and in flashback past retains a sustainable 90-mystery.

One of the last horror films to be released in 2021, “Achoura” came to digital platforms and DVD home video this past December from Dark Star Pictures, the same company who released the phenomenal Veracruz folklore and Bruha horror, “The Old Ways,” and the Mickey Reece’s perfectly subtle nod to vampires and depression in “Climate of the Hunter.” Since a digital screener was provided, commenting on the DVD audio and video quality is a no-go, but the Mathieu De Montgrand offers harsh hard lit scenes vast in depth, a breadth of landscape between the countryside of France and Casablanca shoreline, and excellent action and tracking shots to instill the appearance of a big-time movie. Montgrand is definitely not just a point and shoot cinematographer as he can build suspense purely on his angles along with Julien Foure’s editing of the flashback montage that tells a bigger side of the four friends’ history yet to be revealed. “Achoura’s” bleak analogy of children’s innocence being consumed by the complexities of adulthood problems understands the unstoppable crossbreeding crisis of blending youthful naivety with seasoned reality to the point of no return that one day all unspoiled exuberance will simply be eaten into oblivion.

“Achoura” now available on Prime Video!

Set in conflict of the Iran-Iraq war, the young and educated Shideh living in war-frightened Tehran becomes forced to succumb to patriarchal dogma after participating in a revolution against Iran’s standing principals. Her husband’s conscription sends his medical experience to the battle front while she settles into her role as a stay at-home mother to their young daughter and despite pleas from her husband, the stubborn Shideh will not vacate her apartment building home even when the threat of an Iraqi attack is imminent. When a dud ballistic missile crashes into the apartment about them, nearly breaking through their ceiling, the fear of a sinister presence circulates amongst the tenants that drives them one-by-one from the building with the prospect of an Iraqi attack to further motivate as a logical decider. An unsuperstitious Shideh remains until her daughter’s imagery whims and unwavering fever begin to form a more terrorizing atmosphere that even has her questioning the shadowy company of evil.

Not many horror films scare nowadays. “Under the Shadow” is not one of those films. The debut feature film of writer-director Babak Anvari posses a rare commodity of grueling fear set inside an already tense backdrop of the 1980’s Iran-Iraqi war. Anvari, the Tehran born Iranian nationality who was engulfed religiously in the culture, borrowed and rendered his from his family’s stories of supernatural pre-Islamic demons whisking through the wind toward those swimming in sorrow and fear; those demons were also labeled djinns. As a child born in the 80’s, Anvari had to rely and family to obtain a sense of the anxious air suffocating those taut by potential missle strikes as well as political and social punitive measures going against the grain. The UK based independent production company, Wigwam Films, financed the BAFTA winner for an Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer as well as receiving other nomination nods in other categories, serving as one of young production company’s shining stars early in the tenure.

Wrought by the explosive squabbles of two sovereign nations and incepted with archaic folklore, Shideh’s bound and torn between reality and the prospect of superstition, a role dutifully played by another Iranian born, Narges Rashidi, whose family moved to Berlin and she studied acting, scoring a minor role in the motion picture adaptation of the science fiction television series, “Aeon Flux,” and in the 2009 comedy-horror “Must Love Death.” Rashidi courts Sheideh approvingly with sincere strife over how women serving beneath men in 1980’s Iran as well as struggling to overcome that internal conflict as the mirror image of herself, meaning her daughter, when a phantom prowler is afoot. Portraying Shideah’s daughter, Dorsa, and the frequent link between the Djinn’s world and her own is Avin Manshadi in her debut performance. Manshadi’s round cheeks and doughy eyes set upon a physique stilling lingering some ounces of baby fat has little range, but most creepy kids and in creepy kid horror films rarely do. Rashidi and Manshadi fend well for themselves as the sole two characters cornered by war and Shideh’s personal vendetta against her country, her husband, and even her daughter to prove she isn’t useless as the motif lets on. “Under the Shadow” rounds out with Bobby Naderi (“Bright”), Aram Ghasemy, Soussan Farroknia, Behi Djanati Atai, and Ray Haratian (“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”).

“Under the Shadow” finds itself in a subgenre nearly all it’s own as the variety of djinn-horror anemically pops up every so often as an unpopular and uncoiled viper, unlike the antagonist powerhouses of zombies and ghosts that’ve reigned supreme over the last two decades, and though Anvari’s film shares little with Robert Kurtzman’s demonic djinn of 1997’s “Wishmaster,” “Under the Shadow” has more in common with the late Tobe Hooper’s last film, entitled simply Djinn, before his death. Both are built on the substructure of an Arabic/Muslin mythology, set on an apartment building locale, and exhibit the malevolency side of the djinn, but Babak Anvari accomplishes a great feat on his very first attempt – a stiffly frightening air of a phenomenally harrowing horror story. Anvari patiently stacks blocks of tension, one on top of another, without a hint of quivering throughout the acts and what’s more astonishing is that all the acts deliver different notes prosed to detail that secures a simmering, shivering plot. To praise Anvari more, the young filmmaker leaves nothing to chance by closing with an open ending for the mind to assemble information and interpret the events; a classic directorial tool used by some of the greats.

Shuttering in the dark has never been so delectable with “Under the Shadow” inside a packed, limited edition Blu-ray from Second Sight Films. The LE runs with only 2000 copies sheathed inside a rigid slipcover with covert art by science fiction artist, Christopher Shy. Global horror aficionados will rejoice to learn that the UK BD disc is region free and presented in a widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, that’ll be available February 10th. Unfortunately, Second Sight Films provided a DVD-R Blu-ray screener so I’m unable to speak upon the video and audio aside from what’s already been stated. I will say the subtitles were accurate and timely paced. There were special features on the disc, including segmented interviews with director Babak Anvari, lead actress Narges Rashidi, producers Lucan Toh and Oliver Roskill, cinematographer Kit Fraser along with an audio commentary Babak Anvari and Jamie Graham and Anvari’s short film “Two and Two.” Press release also mentioned the release includes a soft cover book with new essays from Jon Towlson and Daniel Bird plus behind-the-scenes photos and concept illustrations and a poster featuring new artwork. “Under the Shadow” must be watched in the dark, alone, and with the volume up, maximizing the crawling chill down the spine and raising all the micro hairs on every square inch of skin.