For my annual Halloween horror pick, I am highlighting a contemporary film, one that is currently playing in theaters, and not a horror classic from the past. Cuando Acecha la Maldad (U.S. title, When Evil Lurks, 2023) is the sixth feature film for Argentine director Demian Rugna, which includes his 2011 movie Malditos Sean! (U.S. title, Cursed Bastards), co-written and directed with Fabian Forte. This is a movie about demonic possession but it has little in common with the most famous film in that horror subgenre, The Exorcist (1973), with one exception: we never learn how or why the evil entity goes about choosing the victim that launches the ensuring madness. The nightmare starts with a bang – literally – as two farmer brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demian Salomon) hear gunshots on their neighbor’s property. When they investigate the following day, they discover that a member of their neighbor’s family is a “rotten,” a possessed being, and no one knows how to deal with it. When the brothers ask wealthy landowner Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski) and his pregnant wife for help, they inadvertently set in motion a series of actions that not only release the evil spirit but help it spread like a virus.
When Evil Lurks distinguishes itself almost immediately from any other demonic possession movie through an original premise that may have been inspired by South American folklore (but is Ragna’s creation) plus it has an unpredictable narrative arc that twists and turns in surprising ways. The film is also unique for its remote rural setting where some of the older country folk have had previous experiences with the rotten. Pedro’s brother, Jimi, ends up enlisting the help of Mirta (Silvina Sabater), an older woman and former lover who has the reputation of being a “cleaner,” someone who has the knowledge to contain and prevent a rotten from infecting others.
There are seven rules that must be followed for keeping a rotten at bay such as avoid using electric lights because the shadows they cast draw them in but only a few old-timers are aware of these precautions. We also discover that animals are usually the first to notice the presence of a rotten and they, along with children, are usually the first victims of possession. These details are disturbing enough but when the rules are broken or ignored, the results can escalate beyond your worst fears. Pedro learns this the hard way when his frantic attempts to save his own family from evil only creates further turmoil and even Mirta’s knowledge proves useless when Pedro acts impulsively instead of heeding her instructions.
Rugna has stated in interviews that he is a hardcore heavy metal music fan and a lover of extreme horror films although When Evil Lurks looks like an art film compared to the excesses of the Saw horror franchise or something like Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005). Yes, it can be exceeding violent – an axe to the head, a dog attack, bodily mutilation – but it never feels gratuitous or exploitative because the most shocking set pieces flow organically from the creepy folk myths the director has created around the rotten.
You should know going in that Ragna has a take-no-prisoners approach to narrative and the most sympathetic and likable characters, even small children, may wind up dead or worse. He also avoids mechanical jump scares or the use of patently phony CGI effects in favor of live action jolts that happen in the middle of the frame and at the most unexpected moments. But what I admire most of all is how the director goes against the grain of using young, beautiful actors as the usual mindless body count victims and substitutes them with a more intriguing age range of working class characters that includes some middle-aged protagonists, a grandmother, a teenage autistic kid and some elementary school tots.
Rugna’s film is structured like a breathless thrill ride and just when you think the worse has been avoided, something more horrible occurs due to bad decision making. When Evil Lurks is not the sort of horror film that offers closure and its open ending could easily lead to a sequel but I suspect that Rugna will keep creating original horror stories and not rely on the sort of formulaic tropes that can become so repetitive and predictable in something like Night of the Living Dead rip-offs.
Horror film fans have responded enthusiastically to When Evil Lurks but mainstream moviegoers may not embrace this movie like they have with more recent Hollywood horrors like The Nun II (2023) and Insidious: The Red Door (2023). In fact, it has already disappeared from first run movie houses in Atlanta after a one or two week run. One obstacle may be due to the fact that the movie is a foreign language film (in Spanish with English subtitles). Another potential problem is the lack of recognizable name actors in the lead roles and Rugna’s refusal to neatly tie up any loose ends in the narrative or explain things too much. A fear of the unknown is the primal force driving the narrative and there are scenes that will probably come back to haunt you days after you have seen the movie.
Rugna has complained that there is a scarcity of South American horror directors but he was an admirer of the work of actor/writer/director Narcisco Ibanez Menta (1912-2004), who was born in Spain but worked in Argentina, starring in macabre anthologies like Masterworks of Terror (1960) and TV productions such as The Phantom of the Opera (1960). Rugna also cited The Evil Dead (1981), the South Korean thriller The Wailing (2016) and the grim, post-apocalyptic world of The Road (2009) as influences on his horror aesthetic.
One way in which When Evil Lurks departs radically from The Exorcist and other demonic possession thrillers is the absence of religion or priests who are brought in to combat evil. The Catholic Church has no presence in his world but problems created by modern civilization like environmental damage, homelessness, a proliferation of gun owners, etc. can take shape as horrific metaphors in his cinema. In an interview with Mary Beth McAndrews for Dread Central, Ragna described how the setting and concept of When Evil Lurks grew out of real issues facing Argentina: “…there’s a problem in my country that there’s a lot of fields on plantations and you have a lot of contamination from the plantation. The owners of the land are powerful people, the workers who work in the fields are really poor people. The contamination is because of the pesticides. It brings to the population cancer. There are a lot of children with cancer in the interior of my country. So nobody knows because the press doesn’t cover it. So the idea was, “OK, what if something bad happened with these poor people in the middle of nowhere?” Then, what about if there’s a demon and nobody knows or the people realize it too late? Obviously, I want to make an exorcism movie and I decided to mix the ideas to bring some fresh ideas to that [subgenre].”
On the basis of When Evils Lurks and Aterrados (English Title: Terrified), his 2017 horror thriller about a haunted apartment house, I look forward to Ragna’s next project and fully expect him to become as well known and accomplished one day as Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water).
When Evil Lurks is currently streaming on Shudder but the ideal way to see it is on the big screen in a theater with an excellent sound system.
Other links of interest:
https://collider.com/when-evil-lurks-demian-gugna-interview/
https://variety.com/2017/film/global/mar-del-plata-argentina-demian-rugna-1202622431/
Cinema Sojourns 