This review is a part of DraftKings Network’s 2023 Fantastic Fest coverage.
Possession films are a dark piece of business as is. The mere thought of some evil entity being able to take over somebody’s physical and mental state to act as a totem to inflict harm has been driving the nightmares of horror fans for years. It’s a test of faith and the ultimate battle between good and evil. Even with how shocking films like The Exorcist and Prince of Darkness are, there are some parameters to them. Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks throws any guard rails entirely to the wayside – where nobody is safe in the particular demonic tale. You have to be suspicious of animals, children, etc.
Some of the classic lore in place in which this spirit uses the powers of deception and confusion to throw you off. However, within the world Rugna has constructed, a mix of foreboding doom comes from two distinct angles. One night, brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomon) hear gunshots in the woods. Smartly, they decide to investigate what happened during the daytime. Upon further looks, they find the torso of a man and some unique tools left behind. They try to rationalize this as it is possibly due to a puma attack – however, this town holds a nasty secret.
See, in When Evil Lurks, possession works differently. Pedro and Jimmy visit a woman named Maria Elena’s (Isabel Quinteros) home, discovering her oldest son Uriel is one of “The Rotten.” Demons move more like diseases in this world, and once they get into your psyche, they use you as an incubation vector to birth it. He’s bedridden, bloated, and marked with wounds and boils. But even as he begs to kill him, you can’t in the conventional sense because the demon will then spread throughout the town like a virus. Pedro and Jimmy see the seriousness of the situation and go to the police (who have known about this for a year) and get ignored.
Another local man named Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski) is dismissive also. His only concern is the land he acquired and won’t let go of. Instead of fleeing, Ruiz plans for the three men to take Uriel outside city limits and drop him off. You can probably guess how successful this plan is (not good!) – setting off a bunch of chain reactions that are incredibly blunt and downright unrelenting. Rugna’s script places the audience in the passenger’s seat. The characters know much more about this world than we do. It’s only as we see the craziness of the gore firsthand that we start to get more dribs and drabs of information.
You cannot use electricity because it will attract demons. People called “Cleaners” are called to different locations to dispose of the Rotten with a unique tool. Even that’s not a guarantee, as these entities tend to be resourceful. All this information is told through natural conversation as the plot moves as a considerable space. Even with the rules, there is room for ambiguity to take shape and shift perspectives. It’s why When Evil Lurks takes on a darker tone than most films in this genre.
The rot isn’t only present in the souls overtaken by this mass infection event – it also exists within the choices and the indifference of the characters we meet. As the path is set out, different motivations collide and likely backfire. Pedro has a murky past of abandoning his family, not seeing his children, and not paying child support. That is found when he rolls up to his ex-wife’s home in a frenzy to get everyone out. There’s mention of escaping to the city, but much of what this town is going through feels like purgatory.
Everybody has failed due to the indifference offered by the police officers in the film. But in fact, the characters have their battles to fight. Nothing is won (if anything) in a clean manner. It’s messy, shocking, and, most of the time, demoralizing. Using practical effects brings forth a macabre sense of neverending hopelessness that these characters will find their way out of these predicaments. Rugna could have elected to take the easy way out, but carved out his tense path to a place of no return.
