My knowledge of Argentinian folklore is nonexistent. That blank slate is probably what makes When Evil Lurks so effective. Turns out, evil isn’t just a Japanese, Mexico or US thing: every country has their own tales that help make the place they live a little creepier to everyone; I know I’ll think twice about Buenos Aires as my next vacation if evil’s really lurkin through Argentina like this.
At night, brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demian Salomon) hear gunshots near their home. In the morning, they investigate, finding a severed body in the woods. Their detective work takes them to the home of a neighbor, who’s housing a “possessed.” Desperate to keep their land value, the brothers and another neighbor drive this possessed far away from home, but as we probably know, 300 kilometers isn’t far enough away for the devil.
Scares and story. If a horror movie has both, you’ve probably had a great time. When Evil Lurks certainly has a bunch of scares. In keeping with modern times, the scares here are more of the violent, visceral variety, going past previous movie boundaries to everyone’s shock and awe. I covered my mouth in abject horror multiple times from things I’ve never seen a movie attempt before. A warning to all parents: many bad things happen around children in this movie, which you might not want to see. I definitely felt sufficiently creeped out, grossed out, and worn out When Evil Lurks, and sucks the life out of you, blow by violent, scary blow.
It’s not just the head trauma that the movie leaves with you though. It’s writer director Demian Rugna’s lore building. The concept of the “possessed” works, sort of like the more violent It Follows or Exorcist of Argentina. A body gets taken over by the devil, and can only be excised in specific ways to eliminate the spirit. And if you don’t do it right, the demon can jump into animals, then children, then adults, in that order, and potentially be reborn. In the always fun scene, there are seven rules specifically that have to be followed to survive and eliminate a possession that have been around in song for centuries: don’t use guns, no electric lights, etc, that explain how these spirits can hide in plain sight and also destroy a town or city. We’ve also got the old, run down, cleaner Mierta (Silvia Sabater) filling in the gaps for the audience before the big final showdown. These choices by Rugna allegorically fit into Argentina today: the loss of religion, city violence, bad parenting, etc and coupled with the horrific imagery seeped into my brain long after When Evil Lurks ended.
Shudder might have found a gem with When Evil Lurks. The movie ends in a place ripe for sequel with a brand new cast, potentially dispersing across all of Argentina. I would love to see the possessed in a city, to see how it tears through the town, and scathingly chastise the slow government response, as has been done in Japanese and US horror films. But if we got just this one, it’s a visceral horror treat at the beginning of October: way better than the legacy sequel garbage the studios are putting out these days.