Achoura

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 see what happens next; but unfortunately, the horror elements are a huge letdown. This relies too heavily on CGI for the monster, action scenes, kills and blood. Everything that happens in this film was CGI and a miss. This even becomes hard to watch at times.

In conclusion, Achoura is a movie that had potential but relied way too much on CGI for my liking. I would score this a 3.5-4/10 and recommend skipping it.