When Evil Lurks (15)

Dir: Demián Rugna

Cast: Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Saloman, Luis Ziembrowski, Silvia Sabater, Marcelo Michinaux

Demián Rugna’s Argentinian horror is shockingly bleak yet highly accomplished as it delivers a visceral take on the possession subgenre

Back in 2017, Argentinian filmmaker, Demián Rugna, burst onto the international horror scene with the success of his criminally overlooked film, Terrified. The film was not just regarded as one of the best horror movies from the country, but one of the most successful movies to come out of Argentina in recent years. After strong performances in his native country, the film was picked up for international distribution by Netflix and horror streaming platform, Shudder.

Despite being dominated by streaming giants like Netflix and Disney+, Shudder has built up a large and cult-like fanbase of horror devotees over the years, as it continues to provide a solid platform for international filmmakers to get their movies distributed to a wider audience.

Rugna has teamed up with Shudder once again for his most recent horror movie release, the brutally shocking and often disturbing ‘When Evil Lurks’. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September as part of the festival’s “Midnight Madness” season. It was following the premiere where the film started to receive stellar reviews from a small number of critics as it went into the festival somewhat under the radar. It was essentially this surrounding buzz, and from strong word of mouth from fellow online bloggers like myself, that brought my attention to the film and I was determined to seek it out. As a result, I knew very little about the Argentine’s latest film going into it, having seen no trailers or read up an info regarding synopsis or thematic elements – and boy, I was not prepared.

The film opens up on a rural Argentinian farmhouse, where brothers, Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomon) are disturbed in the night when they hear gunshots in the nearby woods. The following morning, the brothers go to investigate, only to discover the mutilated remains of a unknown man. After searching the local area, the brothers come across a nearby shack owned by the elderly, Maria Elena (Isabel Quinteros). Maria informs the brothers that her eldest son, Uriel, has become a “rotten”, a being possessed by an unborn demon. The brothers deduce the body they found was that of a “cleaner”, who was hired by Maria, to kill her son and abort the demon before it possesses anyone else.

Knowing that there is a “rotten” amongst there community, both Pedro and Jimi first set out to dispose of Uriel themselves, with the help of landowner, Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski). Once this plan fails, and more people and animals start to become possessed, the brothers face an increasingly difficult challenge of removing the demonic force from their community, as its presence and powers of manipulation become stronger.

What follows, is a relatively brisk and psychologically disturbing horror, that is not for the faint of heart and I do not use that phrase lightly. Just like with ‘Terrified’, Rugna pulls no punches when it comes to the brutality on show here. Throughout the entirety of the movie’s runtime, I was constantly in disbelief as to what I was watching play out on screen – one scene in particular involving an axe springs to mind. Along with the film’s unprecedented shock factor, there is also a relentless and vile amount of gore, which will get any horror fan purring. The overly graphic depictions of violence and the visually grotesque sight of the “rotten” Uriel are viscerally brought to life thanks to some fantastic practical effects.

Despite the film’s contemporary setting, Rugna’s decision to have the film set in rural Argentina results in a great sense of isolation, really hammering home the fact that these brothers are well and truly on their own in dealing with a potentially apocalyptic problem. The dire situation in which they find themselves serves as the driving force for the film’s thematic elements. The first solution the brothers come to, along with their landowner Ruiz, when presented with their problem of the “rotten”, is to take it somewhere else, not solving the problem but making it someone else’s responsibility. It turns out however, that the spiritual logistic of the “rotten” is that any attempt to displace it only makes the curse grow stronger and faster. This is why it comes as no surprise to the viewer that when the brothers decide to take their problem to the police, they too want as little to do with it as possible, despite being figures of authority. Conspiracy nut Ruiz even theorizes that the “rotten” Uriel was placed on their land by the government to move the problem to somewhere that no one will notice. These themes are very in-keeping with the world we live in today, as people in power and governments in powerful countries continue to ignore or pass on global problems rather than tackling them head on, ultimately leading to them spiralling out of control.

With such a large and potentially catastrophic problem being passed onto two rural farmers in the middle of the Argentinian countryside, mistakes are predictably made and with horrific consequences. The film has very similar thematic elements and plot devices to Na Hong-jin‘s Korean horror film, The Wailing. Both films explore a virus of demonic origins that spreads through a rural village, with little to no intervention by the authorities. The one thing that prevents ‘When Evil Lurks’ from reaching the levels of a horror film like ‘The Wailing’, is the increasingly dumb decisions made by the two protagonists, Pedro in particular. The bad decision making may contribute towards the central theme at the core, but it can be very frustrating as a viewer to watch those you are rooting for continuously making matters worse by simply being idiotic and occasionally selfish.

This results in a very bleak and nihilistic tone throughout and while this did mostly work for me, it will undoubtedly be too much for viewers. That being said, there is no questioning how effective the film is as a hard-hitting horror and it serves as a sensible but successful step up for Demián Rugna, and I will be keeping my eye out for what he makes next…I will just try and be more prepared next time.

When Evil Lurks is now available to stream on Shudder