[Film Review] Achoura (2018)

“On happy Ashura night, their joy burns too bright. He’s woken from his slumber, famished by a hunger. Their joy he wants to eat, those children young and sweet. The children scream so loudly…his name is Bougatate.” 

Achoura (2018), a French language film from Morocco, follows a group of adult friends who are reckoning with a tragedy in their past. Friends since childhood, they share a collection of memories, but some of them have forgotten what happened to their friend Samir. Something strange occurred on Ashura Night, or Child’s night, a religious celebration in Morocco during which children splash water on each other and gather around a bonfire. We see flashbacks to their time as children, but things are not as straightforward as they seem. 

The three main adult characters are Ali (Younes Bouab, Nadia (Sofiia Manousha), and Stéphane (Iván González). Ali and Nadia have a son together, but their relationship has ended. They're both still friends with Stéphane, who is an artist. Early in the film, we see Nadia attend one of Stéphane’s art shows, and it’s clear he has not moved on from their childhood trauma. His art reflects the monster he remembers taking his friend Samir, and says to his audience, “Monsters reflect our society.” He is trying to scare Nadia into remembering what happened, and he says he is sharing his nightmares to better confront them. 

This film has a dreamlike feeling. Some of the scenes transition from one to the next without you noticing it’s happening, and suddenly you find yourself in a new situation, much like how a dream can feel. The color palette is muted for the adults’ scenes, and bright in the children's flashbacks, making the surroundings seem surreal. The police investigation scenes have a yellow palette reminiscent of Se7en (1995). In the first third of the film, a few different groups of characters are introduced which leaves you wondering how all the stories will connect. They do, if you're patient to wait and watch. But this is not a film that holds your hand. You have to be willing to draw conclusions on your own.

Achoura has loads of scary visuals. We don't see too much of the monster, Bougatate, just enough to make us want more. It manifests as black smoke that materializes when it takes children, then disappears again, making it hard to confront or conquer. In Stéphane’s art show, he displays surreal and unsettling images of the monster he remembers, and supplies masks for viewers to impersonate Bougatate. This monster doesn’t stop at simply taking children, he also takes the joy of all the youngsters around him who grow into joyless adults. Bougatate eats the joy of all the children he can. 

This film has been compared to Stephen King’s IT (1986), which is high praise indeed. There are similarities to IT, in that Achoura is a story about adults confronting a monster from childhood and banding together to do so. But Achoura has its own unique feeling and doesn’t come out of 1980s American culture. The decisions and personalities of the characters are not the same, and it’s exciting to see another take on a familiar setup. Check out Achoura for a dark and special monster movie.

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