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| Images courtesy of Shudder |
While films like The
Exorcist: Believer beg the question why moviegoers still keep coming back
to demonic possession horror movies with the familiar tropes of green vomit,
rotating heads and pure malevolence on a metaphysical level, Argentinian
writer-director Demián Rugna who recently directed the Spanish horror films Terrified
and Satanic Hispanics reinforces the subgenre’s possibilities in
evoking sheer terror or shock from the viewer with his new Shudder based film When
Evil Lurks. Quite possibly the best,
most wholly original demonic possession freakout since The Wailing which
also saw not just one person but a whole community being afflicted by the
demonic presence, it’s a mean and mad transgressor whose horrors don’t seem to
know when to stop before leaving you drained, battered and broken.
In a remote
Argentinian village, two brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demian
Salomón) overhear gunshots at night and find a grisly sight the next morning in
the form of dismembered body parts and hints leading to a neighbor’s home with
a dreadful sight: a morbidly obese man named Uriel (Pablo Galarza) who appears
to be demonically possessed. Dubbed a
“rotten” by local folklore, Uriel is bedridden, covered in gangrenous sores, lymphedema,
feces, urine and vomit. Fearing for the
safety of the community, the brothers team up with neighbor Ruiz (Luis
Ziembrowski) who initially try killing him the “right way” but ultimately
decide to move the body to a remote location away from town. Unaware they’ve actually made things worse
the demon proceeds to spread like wildfire from animals to humans leaping from
host-to-host murdering people brutally in its wake before moving on to the next
one. An unstoppable chain reaction, all
we can do is sit and wait for it to destroy us like a blast wave.
Truly taking the
notion of ‘from bad to worse’ to its logical extreme, the horror of When
Evil Lurks stems less from the demonic horrors onscreen which are
terrifying than wallowing in the guilt and fear felt by cowardice and making an
already difficult situation untenable. An
uncompromising bloodbath almost near the Grand Guignol artistic atrocities
committed by Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool and every bit as
overwhelmingly hopeless as The Wailing, Demián Rugna’s fifth directorial
effort released by Shudder and IFC Films is one really very mean and mad horror
film that speaks to humankind’s weaknesses and self-destructive attempts at
survival. We already know going in this
saga is going to end badly and it becomes less about scares than cornering the
audience with unfathomable human horrors that intensify with the film’s
bleakness.
Lensed exquisitely in
2.35:1 panoramic widescreen by Mariano Suárez with a brooding, foreboding electronic
score by Pablo Fuu, the Argentinian countryside has never felt more ominously
threatening from all sides before with an overarching sense of doom. Carrying the film’s dour and frenetic attitude
over are the actors, particularly Ezequiel Rodriguez as the beleaguered and tragic
Pedro who is aware of the trouble he and his family are in but is clearly in
over his head. Equally strong as his
brother sheltering him is Demian Salomón who tries repeatedly to intervene and
avoid stoking the fire but winds up doing just that anyway. What’s especially terrifying in this are the
innovative and truly Satanic new ways children and demonic possession are used
with viscerally gruesome imagery recalling Safe Haven from the second V/H/S
installment. Where The Exorcist:
Believer failed to conjure up anything new, this one thrashes about in ways
never thought of in our worst nightmares.
Given an extremely
limited theatrical release by Shudder before an impending streaming release in two
days, When Evil Lurks is truly not for the faint hearted. A slobbery sinewy angry Pitbull of a movie
steeped in distinctly Spanish horror iconography with a modernly nihilistic and
unforgiving outlook, this brutal, unrated shocker designed to leave you sick
and sore is very like experiencing a road accident. You look about in disbelief at what’s
happening around you, slowly realizing your own physical injury as the very horrors
you tried so hard to prevent from spreading only escalated the situation past
the point of no return. Daring to equate
demonic possession with the vastness of a pandemic, When Evil Lurks resides
nicely alongside such equally apocalyptic horror fare as Dawn of the Dead or
more recently Pulse for creating a sense of loss of control as an event
as unstoppable as the weather or events of the Earth’s core rips through
everything in the life you thought you knew.
I can’t remember the last child demon related horror film of the last
few years that bit quite this hard.
--Andrew Kotwicki
