Maybe more than most types of cinema, horror movies are enslaved by the whims of general popularity. Different subgenres and moods ebb and flow out of the public consciousness — teen meta-slashers in the ‘90s, torture porn and J-horror remakes in the 2000s, ghost stories and found-footage in the early 2010s — and since the late 2010s, horror has been in the thrall of “elevated” indie horror.
Ushered in by the success of movies like The Babadook and Hereditary, “elevated horror” is defined by a strict adherence to didactic allegory and melodrama. While some folks love the trend and some folks hate it (the quality of the movies themselves varies wildly), there has been a noticeable push to expand what contemporary horror offers. In the last two years at least, for every arthouse horror film there’s been a Final Destination: Bloodlines or a Terrifier 3 to break up the monotony — but there’s one director in particular who has seemingly made it his mission to return horror to the abrasive grotesqueness of its heyday. And his 2023 release does just that in a way you can’t help but admire (through your fingers).
How Was When Evil Lurks Initially Received?
The follow-up to Demián Rugna’s cult-classic breakout Terrified, When Evil Lurks was a movie talked about in hushed whispers after it debuted at TIFF in 2023. Just getting there was an arduous process in and of itself: Rugna had initially planned a remake of his previous film Terrified, plans that were derailed by COVID-19. Thankfully, he already had a script in his back pocket, one inspired by real-life headlines about birth defects and cancer being linked to pesticides used by workers in his home of Argentina. The seeds of bureaucratic ineptitude had borne bitter fruit in the form of diseased child laborers and exploited workers, exacerbated by the remote, isolated farms these people were hired to work. It was this very genuine spark that gave life to the film, and the title is an apt reflection of that — what happens when festering corruption is tacitly allowed to lay dormant?
In just a few short movies, Rugna has established himself as a horror auteur, with a style that can only be described as relentlessly brutal and oppressive (feel-bad horror at its most distilled), and that intensity is on display from moment one of When Evil Lurks. It’s a burgeoning apocalypse story, one situated on the choices made by Pedro and Jaime, two brothers trying desperately to protect their family as a demonic possession contagion looms over their rural town. Abandoned by their government and the structural channels designed to prevent this kind of infernal chaos, the two of them gather their loved ones and abscond on the road, driving headfirst into the heart of despair and the consequences of their decisions.
The midnight festival crowd and critics adored the film’s bleakness and gleeful nihilism, evidenced by it winning Best Feature Film at the Stiges Film Festival in Spain and the Critics Prize at the Gérardmer International Fantasy Film Festival. The overwhelmingly positive early word-of-mouth unfortunately didn’t translate at the box office: the theatrical release by IFC Films only grossed $2 million worldwide. This, however, hasn’t stopped an unceasing wave of fans from surging around the movie, and once it was released for streaming on Shudder it took its deserved place as an immediate cult classic.
Why Is When Evil Lurks Important To See Now?
Frankly, When Evil Lurks is one of the most inventive horror films of the last 10 years, both in how it bucks dreary mainstream trends while also reinventing some of the genre’s more well-worn tropes. Demonic possession has been a cinematic mainstay since The Exorcist crab-walked into people’s hearts over 50 years ago, but rarely has it been given this much idiosyncratic flavor — Rugna’s vision of the phenomena is more akin to a viral infection (particularly scary as a post-COVID release), transforming hosts into demented, hellish sadists who taunt our protagonists incessantly. There’s a grotesque, monstrous physicality to the victims, appropriately called the Rotten. Patient Zero, Uriel, is a yellow, swollen ball of pus and decomposition when we meet him 5 minutes in, and the fact that he was lovingly crafted using a team of puppeteers speaks to the tangibility brought to the supernatural by (mostly) practical VFX work. It’s a little bit Evil Dead and a little bit Braindead, with a far meaner streak than either of those.
This is certainly a ruthless film, but it’s never punishing its characters needlessly — there are a set of hard rules to follow in this demonic pandemic, and When Evil Lurks does an excellent job at presenting the consequences of our characters’ bad decisions. Not only is the town failed by their leadership, who leave them to their own devices with disastrous results, but they’re also failed by their own weak convictions. Unlike lots of mindlessly brutal horror movies, Pedro and Jaime are complex and intelligent protagonists, but they also make understandable mistakes and the sins of their pasts come back to haunt them in spectacular fashion. It’s both easy to empathize with them because they feel like real human beings, and also easy to see how the decision-making of real human beings often leads to ruin.
Despite its grimness, When Evil Lurks also knows that above all else, its main goal is to provide entertainment for sickos, which it has in spades. Rugna is very open about his desire to break taboos and shatter the illusion that there’s “safety” in horror, evidenced by his willingness to go places that other filmmakers would shy away from. The best feeling a horror movie can provide is that jaw-dropping sense of repulsed awe, and this offers plenty of moments that evoke that experience — perhaps the most infamous scene in the movie brutally rejects the conception of dogs as “Man’s Best Friend,” and just when you think it’s impossible for the film to top that kind of unexpected savagery, it goes even further with a climax that assaults viewers with some remarkably disturbing visuals and a sincerely soul-crushing ending. It’s modern horror at its most nihilistic but also its most morbidly charming.
What New Features And Upgrades Does The When Evil Lurks 4K Blu-Ray Release Have?
Second Sight’s new 4K Blu-Ray release of the newly canonized underground classic comes with a ton of interesting features, including:
- Dual format edition (UHD and Blu-Ray) with special features on both discs
- An audio commentary from Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodriguez
- It Was Always There: An interview with Demián Rugna
- Tragedy Is Inevitable: An interview with actor Ezequiel Rodriguez
- We Made a Movie: An interview with actor Demián Salomón
- Stripped to the Bone: An interview with actor Virginia Garófalo
- Terror and the Unknown in When Evil Lurks: A video essay by Mike Muncer
- 120-page book with essays by Anton Bitel, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Meagan Navarro, Dan Schindel, Rocco Thompson and Heather Wixson
- 6 collectors’ art cards
