Directed by Talal Selhami
Four childhood friends are reunited when one of them surfaces after twenty years, forcing them to confront a creature straight out of a spine-chilling Moroccan legend.
아슈라, Бугимен, Ông Kẹ, Aszura, Ášúra - noc dětí, Un monstru din legende, อาชูร่า มันกลับมาจากนรก
France12 Paris International Fantastic Film Festival 
South Korea Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 
Vietnam 
Russia16+ 
JapanG France Japan Russia South Korea Vietnam 
the derry children if they were dumber & pennywise was albino
very similar to stephen king's it. achoura is a about a powerful djinn that preys on innocent children. any children who are able to escape it eventually forget about the creature and their encounter with it, but the djinn continues to find ways to remind others of its existence so that it may continue to feast on them. not original even in the slightest, but it has many unsettling moments and the djinn does look quite cool. the script was lacking in many areas and i have a feeling that they weren't sure how to end this so they settled for the first conclusion that came to mind, so that definitely lowered my score for this film. not the best, but this was worth my time and i think the director has a lot of potential for future works.
English Version below ...
Achoura (2018)
Here comes the Boogeyman
ACHOURA ist der zweite abendfüllende Spielfilm des französisch-marokkanischen Regisseurs Talal Selhami. Der junge Filmemacher konnte seit jeher wenig anfangen mit den Genre-Filmen aus seiner Heimat. Deshalb hat er es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, den ersten wirklichen marokkanischen Horrorfilm zu machen.
Drei Freunde, die den Kontakt verloren hatten, treffen sich wieder, als einer ihrer Freunde, der vor 25 Jahren verschwand, plötzlich wieder in ihr Leben tritt. Gemeinsam müssen sie sich den schrecklichen Ereignissen ihrer Jugend stellen und gegen eine monströse Kreatur kämpfen, die aus einer schrecklichen Legende geboren wurde.
Marokkanische IT Variante, gewinnt dadurch sicher nicht den Kreativpreis, kann aber durchaus mit seiner Machart überzeugen. Es geht um ein Monster, das…
Loved the lore, the childhood trauma, the creature and the unfortunate way to contain it. That final choice! Who would you have picked? You wouldn't wish that on your worse enemy.
A fascinating, mysterious tale from start to finish with some bizarrely interesting stylization too
Such a terrifying and atmospheric ride about facing the inescapable trauma of the past
I recently watched the Moroccan film 🇲🇦 The Achoura (2018) on Shudder. The storyline initially follows a group of kids who experience some strange events where one of them disappears. Twenty years later the kid emerges and the childhood friends get back together to find out what happened and why…
This picture is directed by Talal Selhami (Mirages) and stars Sofiia Manousha (Beautiful Minds), Younes Bouab (Queen of the Desert), Iván González (The Divide) and Moussa Maaskri (Stillwater).
This is one of those films that had the ingredients to be worthwhile but fails in execution. Some of the elements reminded me of a fairytale and the premise and setup was pretty good. The acting is good enough to want to…
Illustrates the violent terror that is losing your innocence. Reemphasizes just how devastating a thing that is by its ending, which leans into the cyclical nature of childhood trauma.
Achoura definitely feels reminiscent of It, but what sets Morocco’s first monster movie apart from its Western counterpart is its central monster. While It is of a different world entirely, the djinn is tangibly of our world. The djinn are hauntingly similar to ourselves, they eat, they sleep, they are of a type of physicality that makes for a really exciting presence on screen.
Such an interesting story at play here, even if some of the beats felt a little lacking or nonsensical.
Extremely forgettable rip-off of It. Apparently they spent three years perfecting the CG effects but the result isn’t any more convincing than any number of mid-2000s mid-budget horror films, and aside from the sight of a grown man being restrained by a horse bit and constantly dribbling out of the sides of it there aren’t really any memorable images here either. A couple of hints at a more interesting film – one of the younger characters is a child bride who runs away from her husband; one of the boys grows up to be a cop investigating pedophilia rings – are completely dropped in favour of a generic adults-dealing-with-childhood-trauma narrative. Pretty disappointing overall.
Bizarre; cringey; derivative; messy; overscored; short; uneven.
You wouldn't be at fault for thinking this movie had a lot of vibe like IT (2017) and the sequel in 2019. However this movie does strive to be different in its folk horror aspect as much as possible.
The characters both adults and children were entertaining. It does go into the bleak look into the death of innocence which can make it comparable to Stephen King's IT as well. The effects wasn't bad to see, especially the look of the creature/ghost in this.
Overall this was a decent watch. Something to dive into for a folk horror vibe from Morocco and France while being a holiday theme horror to some extent.
I like horror movies about mythological creatures from other cultures / civilizations, but Achoura was kind of dull. It melds elements of Stephen King's It with a Moroccan religious celebration called Asura, or Children's Night. The djinn or demon that strikes four childhood friends twenty some years ago has to be battled again in the present or else many more innocent children will die.
It's pretty predictable where the story is going right from the jump, and most of the scare sequences aren't very effective. I like some of the concepts and themes that support the story, but the narrative itself was devoid of enough twists and turns to keep me engaged.
The look of the monster was pretty neat,…
If you only read the synopsis, I can understand how you might compare it to Stephen King's "IT". Yes the film is about a creature that eats kids and yes, a couple of those kids start investigating their childhood trauma from their past when they become adults and meet up with third child. But that's basically all the similarities. It's unfortunate that the marketing department writing up the synopsis leaned heavily on the popular blockbuster hit, instead of advertising the creature from Moroccan folklore. Yet, while I wished advertisement was not as this lazy so that it could attract more audiences, I am glad that it didn't spoil the original story for me, allowing me to figure out the mystery…
