Directed by Talal Selhami
Written by Jawad Lahlou, Talal Selhami, David Villemin
Starring Sofiia Manousha, Younes Bouab, Omar Lofti
MPAA Rating Not rated, although would probably be rated PG
Runtime: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Available digtially and dvd December 14

by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

Achoura, a title card informs us, is a holiday in Morocco where children gather around a bonfire and splash water on each other.  It is also called “Child’s Night.”  The film opens during such a celebration, “a long time ago” another title card helpfully informs us.  A young boy and a young girl disappear from the celebration.  The young girl is terrified.  She is a child bride and if her old, abusive husband finds them, he will certainly kill them.  They seek shelter in a spooky old house, through a spooky old cornfield.  The old, abusive, pervert of a father finds where they are.  They fight back.  Their fight is interrupted by a monster who swallows the little girl whole.

From there, we are brought to “nowadays”--a sort of vague term.  There are cell phones, but also rotary phones, VHS tapes and cars still have manual transmissions.  Achoura is something of a fairytale, the past and the present take place during indeterminate times.  “A long time ago” is decades, I’m guessing?

In this relative present, a child plays with a soccer ball alone.  He kicks it into an opened room and the ball gets kicked back.  He plays back and forth with this unseen figure. When the figure steps into the light, it is a shackled man, with a bar fastened over his mouth.  When the child comes to rescue him later, he removes the bar from his mouth and an evil is released.  The monster we saw swallow the little girl whole from the beginning is free now.  We learn that its name is Bougatate and its favorite meal is children.  Children, fear, joy, the usual.  

The film moves back and forth from the present to the past.  We are introduced to our cast of characters–Nadia, a single mother; Ali, her ex-husband and overworked, obsessive cop who chews the filters off of cigarettes before smoking; Stephen, an artist who specializes in the macabre; and Samir, the shackled man with the bar keeping the evil inside of him.

Nadia, Ali, Stephen and Samir, it turns out, had battled the evil as children, and it is up to them to battle it again as adults.

If this sounds a little familiar, it’s basically the plot of Stephen King’s IT, although truncated to a pair of encounters with the demonic boogeyman with an appetite for children.  Though the plot feels directly lifted from Stephen King (replete with cornfield), a lot of the visuals seems to owe a debt to the works of Guillermo Del Toro, particularly with allowing spooky things that go bump in the night to make an appearance whilst bathed in the sunlight.  Just to show that no one can ever be truly safe.

It’s not that Achoura is a bad movie, and it has moments that work very well, it’s that it feels like it’s on autopilot.  Very little of it feels like it’s its own thing.  Yes, it’s derivative.  What isn’t? I don’t think having heavily-borrowed plot elements and visuals should automatically make a movie dull.  But Achoura never feels interested in coming into its own as a unique work.  It feels like homage should be enough. The problem is that I never felt genuine tension.  Some kids get gobbled up by the monster, and we’re only just introduced to them. They hear a noise.  They investigate the noise–is it under the bed? In the closet?  Oh, there it is.  CHOMP!  Repeat that a couple times.  Now, had I formed an emotional attachment to any of these children, I might have cared.

Visually, the movie looks good.  It has some great set design, its lit well, it looks more expensive than it probably actually cost.  Bougatate, the film’s monster… not so much.  It looks goofy.  I get that the special effects artists and director were quite proud of their creation, and they show it in its full glory far too often.  A little mystery goes a long way.  Once you see the thing, all mystery is out the door, and this happens pretty early on.

I’m not a stickler for plot or for coherence, I just think the movie has to be entertaining enough to allow you to overlook certain elements.  Back at the spooky house, as adults, they all split up.  And one of them has a flute that can control this demon.  Why wouldn’t everyone want to be with the one person who can ensure your safety? The whole movie is sort of like this.  Why are these characters behaving this way?  Oh, because the plot demanded it?  Okay, then.

I will say a movie like this is only as good as its ending.  Does it stick to the landing?  It does.  Achoura is elevated by an ending that almost makes the whole thing worth it.  In that regard, as similar as it is to the works of Stephen King, it does a switcheroo by being dull, with a damn fine ending, whereas King has crafted some incredible stories that have been wounded by a lazy deus ex machina.  

Achoura is not an awful movie, just a disappointment.  It sets up a lot, some pays off, some doesn’t.  I think it had a lot more potential and, in fact, I still prefer it over the 2017 and 2019 adaptations of Stephen King’s IT.  Whereas I was merely bored and disappointed with Achoura, counting its references and checking how much time was remaining, IT and its sequel were aggressively, unapologetically awful.  So, at least Achoura has that for it.  It’s not the best adaptation of IT (even if it’s unofficially any version of it), but it’s far from the worst.