'When evil lurks': the virus of diabolical possession arrives from Argentina

When Evil Stalks

is a surprising foray into rural terror through a devilish pagan myth: the “incarnate.”

The film, a success in Argentina, where it has been one of the highest grossing films of the year, is presented as a torrent of archaic legends, viscera, pus and screams that repels as much as it attracts.

The fifth feature film by Demián Rugna, winner at the last Sitges festival - the first top award for a Latin American film - is a sweet treat for lovers of the genre, not suitable for all stomachs.

Deeply unpleasant and nervous, it is a disturbing and macabre allegory about how a contagious diabolical possession that no one wants to believe in germinates in a remote town.

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The film starts right off the bat, without preambles or suspense.

Two brothers with deranged expressions, played by Ezequiel Rodríguez and Demián Salomón, visit a neighboring shack after hearing strange noises in the middle of the night.

There they will discover the putrid possession that will mark the rest of the film: a

drunk

abandoned to its fate, bursting with pustules and pus, and its cleaner, split in two.

Without sparing gruesome details, Rugna precipitates events into a spiral of chaos and confusion through which she sees a torn territory.

With elements of

road-movie

and neo-western we move through a map infested with madness that ends up permeating everything thanks to an astute realism that mixes popular beliefs and suggestion, despotism and family dysfunctionality and, above all, infantile Satanism (“A la evil likes children and children like evil,” says a character) and animal.

Ezequiel Rodríguez, in 'When evil lurks'.

When Evil Stalks

is not a typical movie about exorcisms and crucifixes.

He appeals to ancestral fears with an urgency that gives no respite to jump into a poisoned pool, taking his dip to the extreme.

The tension is caused by unbridled tension and violence that hits the viewer.

All this chaos goes much further than his previous film,

Terrified

(2017), and seems to be constructed as a bloody warning in the face of a present (there and everywhere) of unbridled hatred.

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The film tells us about a demonic entity rooted in popular folklore, but what seems to beat behind its compulsion is the representation of panic in its most primary state before the arrival of a dark power capable of corrupting like a virus (the idea of contagion-zombie is present from the first minute) the innocence of an entire town.

When evil lurks

Director:

Demián Rugna.

Performers:

Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Luis Ziembrowski, Silvina Sabater.

Genre:

horror.

Argentina, 2023. 

Duration:

99 minutes.

Premiere: March 19.

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