‘When Evil Lurks’ (2023): Sloppy Yet Satisfying

Directed by: Demián Rugna || Produced by: Fernando Diaz, Emily Gotto, Roxana Ramos, Samuel Zimmerman

Screenplay by: Demián Rugna || Starring: Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Salomon, Luis Ziembrowski, Silvia Sabater, Marcelo Michinaux

Music by: Pablo Fuu || Cinematography: Mariano Suarez || Edited by: Lionel Cornistein || Country: Argentina, United States || Language: Spanish

Running Time: 99 minutes

When most filmmakers want to portray an inescapable genre nightmare for their characters on a moderate to large scale (i.e. bigger in narrative scope than a ghost haunting a house or a demonic curse stalking an individual) without resorting to the rabid undead as antagonists (I count both “traditional” slow, shambling reanimated corpses and fast, agile “infected” as zombies, for the record), they have to get creative. Filmmakers like Rob Jabbaz with The Sadness (2021), Breck Eisner with The Crazies (2010) remake, James Gunn with Slither (2006), or Don Siegel/Philip Kaufman/Abel Ferrara with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978/1993, respectively) essentially replace mindless, animalistic zombies with mobs of corrupted sentient individuals that function in similar ways (they operate in large numbers, they’re an ever present physical threat our heroes must avoid either through stealth or speed, etc.), just with the active, calculated malice of the latter instead of the absentminded ravenousness of the former.

Costar and diegetic brother of protagonist Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Salomon, is scarred by only the latest in a series of gruesome events in When Evil Lurks.

Argentine filmmaker Demián Rugna adapts this loose concept of a cinematic waking nightmare to the sandbox of supernatural folk horror in When Evil Lurks (Spanish = Cuando acecha la maldad), where the lines between infectious disease and demonic possession blur. Set in the rural, unspecified countryside of his home country, Rugna depicts a unique yet inconsistent horror world in which supernatural curses that use individuals as hosts to birth corporeal demons are accepted reality and demonic possession is treated like a plague outbreak.

The arbitrary, almost goofy rules governing the physical spread of demonic influence in the film’s diegesis (e.g. never shoot a possessed being, avoid electrical lights that attract them, animals and small children are most susceptible to supernatural mind control, corpses can also be reanimated and possessed, possession can involve teleportation and other inexplicable heightened abilities, the parasitized vessel housing a demon can only be terminated with a special dagger, etc.) aren’t clearly explained to the audience until the end of the second act, and for the majority of the film feel as if writer-director Rugna makes them up as needed for storytelling convenience.

An obvious disconnect furthermore exists between the unambiguous existence of transmissible supernatural curses in this cinematic world and how almost every character is portrayed as totally ignorant of them or willing to ignore their horrific consequences even after experiencing them firsthand. I’m sure interpretations of the diegesis of When Evil Lurks could involve fictional analogies to public health policy, unresponsive government action toward disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, neglect of rural infrastructure and development, the urban-rural divide, and so on, but the sloppy depiction of all the aforementioned malevolent phenomena, while interesting in many respects, comes across to me more as poor directorial execution of half-baked script ideas.

When the film isn’t tripping over its narrative contrivances, however, its creative blend of pathogenic demonic possession and undead horror is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. The constant escalation of narrative stakes for our characters as they rush to at first escape, and then later contain, the demonic plague threatening their community heightens the movie’s pace and ensures constant tension in every scene. Rugna conveys the risk of lethal danger to his castmembers without exhausting his audience or reveling in gratuitous violence a la The Sadness; a shocking yet well foreshadowed animal attack on a child advances the story with pinpoint precision, while the third act’s ultimate confrontation between characters played by Ezequiel Rodriguez and Silvina Sabater and a gestating demon is memorable for its pace, atmospheric music, and choice of location (a haunted schoolyard) alone. An encounter with Rodriguez’s diegetic wife (Virginia Garófalo) feasting on the brains of their son (Marcelo Michinaux) also leaves a mark on the viewing experience.

If writer-director Demián Rugna had thought out the premise of When Evil Lurks a tad longer, I bet the film would’ve been a nearly flawless horror thrill-ride. The movie’s storytelling contrivances, as they are, almost cripple the experience for me given how often I was distracted by the film’s inconsistent portrayal of how its central threat operates, as well as how unclearly its own characters understand that threat.

Top: Luis Ziembrowski threatens to euthanize a “rotten,” an individual infected with a demonic presence soon to give birth to said demon’s physical form. Bottom: You might wanna step away from that mastiff, there…

On the other hand, I remained on the edge of my seat for most of the movie’s runtime due to how well constructed and staged so many of its horrific set-pieces were. I therefore must tilt my review-o-meter ever so slightly to the positive side since When Evil Lurks has stuck with me, and I reckon will stick with you, too.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: The kills are as creative as much as the imaginative premise grabs your attention, while the characters of When Evil Lurks are relatable without feeling like the empty point-of-view vessels so many major studio horror movies use. With gore this good and sequences this haunting, you won’t mind the downer of an ending.

— However… you won’t understand the rules of Demián Rugna’s diegesis until almost two thirds through the film, and even then, the abilities and influence of the titular “evil” remain vague to the point of frustration. Explaining away convoluted narrative logic with vague demonic spirituality is comparable to the Force making the Jedi impotent dimwits in the Star Wars prequels (1999, 2002, 2005).

—> When Evil Lurks comes RECOMMENDED, even if I’m not as in love with the experience as most folks appear to be.

? How the fuck did that rotting, immobile fatass jump or tumble from the closed bed of a full-size pickup truck? Did he teleport, too?