When Evil Lurks (Orginal title: Cuando acecha la maldad) Movie Review: Horror movies have staples in the genre that distinguish them from other genres. Because it is a genre so intrinsically connected to eliciting a reaction from an individual, one’s proclivity for liking a horror film depends on how much the film can immerse you in its depiction of the unnatural and the visceral, and how much enjoyment could be gathered by even shunning the events occurring on screen. The reactions are sometimes pre-ordained by the film itself, resulting in filmmakers utilizing jump scares and showcasing violent acts that are gruesome and over-the-top.
That being said, very few horror movies can cause unease in me as a viewer. I have found that horror movies with an apparent grounding towards reality or being able to successfully immerse in the reality of the film so that its internal logic is easy enough to understand can be compelling. Splatterfest or slasher flicks run the risk of being repetitive because they are built on the inherent concept of extracting pleasure from heightened violence.
Thus, possession as a sub-genre of horror films is always unsettling because it takes the concept of something abstract and theoretically weaves it into a reality very much mirroring our own. If the movie is as successful in maintaining verisimilitude as in William Friedkin’s seminal masterpiece “The Exorcist,” the unnatural and the natural coalesce in a horror story that is equal parts chilling and existential in its nightmarish vision. It is chilling because, even though the events shown are unnatural, the world they resemble is real, and the characters’ reactions are all too genuine.
Of course, the caveat here is that the movie should be good, remembering the core tenets of that subgenre. Demian Rugna’s “When Evil Lurks” is a movie that has the potential to be a modern-day masterpiece. Following two brothers who discover a demon-infected man about to give birth to something evil, the movie slowly explores how the “evil” begins to infect a small town, almost like an airborne disease. The possession itself shown in the film is gruesome and gross, but what makes the movie immersive are the details embedded into the film’s reality. The characters’ reactions—the sense of disbelief, confusion, feelings of dread, and an existential crisis occurring because of witnessing an infection among people they have known throughout their lives—hit much harder.
The movie, however, ratchets into high gear when Rugna reveals, via his propensity towards violence, that no character or creature is off-limits in this film, be it animals like a goat, a dog, or even children. Rugna thus crafts arguably one of the scariest jump scares I remember in recent memory, and that is primarily because while the film is hinting towards the event about to occur with its score and the camera cutting to and from a conversation to the location of the event, I was feeling a mix of dread and curiosity. When the event occurs, the impact is felt like a freight train, with the handheld camera and the anxiety occurring due to that camera movement.
The movie’s progression consequently doesn’t resemble a chase film in its pace, even though the principal motive of the characters is outrunning the evil. But because of that adrenaline rush that occurred due to the nearly perfect jump scare, the anxiety persists. Rugna successfully conveys that evil is an abstraction, and they may fail to outrun this infection because they might already be infected. You compound that with the characters trying to equate the mistakes of their past with the current traumatic events as karma, and it grounds the film to a relatable degree. If interwoven well, guilt and reconciliation of trauma and the past help flesh out the characters.
Rugna, however, overshoots his ambition by slowly and steadily trying to expand upon the mythology, which he hints at throughout the movie. It’s easy enough to take into account when the rules of avoiding demonic possession are explored by a grandmother reciting them to her grandson through stories. It is harder to reconcile when the mythology suddenly expands to introduce concepts like “cleaners” and specialized weapons to destroy possessed bodies. Rugna sidesteps those issues with the gore and the practical makeup, which produce a bone-chilling effect. There are shades of Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell trilogy in how the horrifying monstrosities are depicted with their full practical glory. Moreover, Rugna doubles down on using children as a motif for evil, twisting the prevalent symbol of innocence. It adds to the unsettling nature of the horror, doubling down on its bleak tonality.
One could spot a mean streak in the film’s body if viewed from a different lens. At its best, the movie is a modern-day exploration of the crisis of faith and the frailties of the human soul, struggling to reconcile with the unimaginable. At its worst, it is a gory horror film with a semblance of a mythological skeleton that the movie threatens to get bogged down into. Thankfully, the balance remains intact because of the conviction in the direction and the performances.
