Stream It Or Skip It: ‘When Evil Lurks’ on Shudder, an Innovative Demonic-Possession Horror That Just Might Be The Scariest Movie of 2023

When Evil Lurks: now THIS is a possession movie. Now on Shudder, Argentine director Demián Rugna’s ambitious and original horror-thriller foregoes all the demonic-possession tropes that have been exploited and worn threadbare since The Exorcist established them, opting for a more compelling, freshly disturbing and potentially metaphorical take on the subgenre. The film debuted at Midnight Madness at the Toronto International Film Festival, and “madness” is absolutely the perfect word to describe this film.

WHEN EVIL LURKS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Gunshots. It’s nighttime, and brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón) try to discern what’s happening in the woods outside their rural home. It’s probably not a poacher. It sounded like a revolver, not a rifle. The next morning they sling their rifles over their shoulders and rally their dogs and trek across the scrubfields, where they find half a body. The bottom half, guts spilling over the waistband of this poor soul’s jeans. Maybe it was a puma? One was on the prowl recently. Maybe it’s their neighbor Ruiz – but no, it doesn’t seem to be. Maybe Ruiz killed this person? They find a box with strange brass instruments in it and a paper map with their neighbor Maria Elena’s name on it, and as the dogs seem to be acting strangely, spooked by something it seems, they make their way to her house.

What they find at Maria Elena’s (Isabel Quinteros) home is… something else. If anything has ever been something else, it’s definitely this: Her son Uriel, bloated, yellow, sick, covered in boils, drooling, oozing pus and begging for death. Pedro and Jimi immediately identify him as one of the “rotten,” a demon-possessed individual. And that half-person in the woods was the “cleaner,” an exorcist who knows all the rules of eliminating one of the rotten before it spreads its, for lack of a better word, disease. Now, this upsetting development is treated by the characters as a not-unexpected occurrence, as if demonic possession is just part of life on planet Earth, like cancer or, say, an easily transmissible deadly virus.

The establishment of this slime-ridden pusmonster in the plot puts Pedro and Jimi in panic mode. They go to the cops, who are jerks. They go to Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski), who helps them move Uriel a few hundred kilometers away, which turns out to be a major no-no – one of the nebulous quasi-“rules” regarding the rotten is, you can’t kill them with firearms or use electricity in their presence, lest the demonic presence infect more people. Then they go to town so Pedro can try to save his estranged kids and ex-wife from the impending rottenness, but all they do is make everything way, way worse, to the point where our jaws hang open and we utter to ourselves, OK, this all went right to hell.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A similarly unpredictable South American movie, Brazilian genre-defier Bacurau, comes to mind, as does grim Stephen King stunner The Mist.

Performance Worth Watching: Rodriguez’s central performance – a complex blend of terror, attempted heroism, concerned parenthood and outright bewilderment – holds the film together during its many unhinged moments.

Memorable Dialogue: Maria Elena’s fearful declaration: “It will take over our bodies. It will take over our souls!”

Sex and Skin: None. 

Our Take: When Evil Lurks is full of Things You’ve Never Seen Before (and Things You Might Never Want to See Again). And while those things occasionally smack of a bit too much effort on Rugna’s part, the film nevertheless stands among the most challenging and imaginative horror films in recent memory, in terms of both concept and visual presentation. The cinematography shows a precise eye for detail – and that extends to the grosser-than-gross practical makeup and visual effects – and exists in vigorous tension with the screenplay, which feels purposely vague, aiming for suggestiveness over overt explication. In telling this deeply strange and unsettling story, Rugna overcorrects here and undercorrects there, but generally nails it, nurturing our curiosity for the bizarre central mystery, and leaving any metaphorical overtures fully up for interpretation. 

Considering the do-they-really-work-or-not “rules” about dealing with the rotten – the question hangs open as to why and how they work, and feel rooted in long-held superstition – When Evil Lurks might be a grotesque allegory for the confusing, panicked early days of the Covid pandemic. But the film could also be something as simple as a creative variation on a dilapidated subgenre, evidenced by a lack of blasphemous obscenities and pea-soup puke being spewed by possessed children, and an emphasis on line-crossing brutality (if you don’t want to see very young children or animals harmed, I recommend taking in the relative family-friendly tameness of The Exorcist: Believer). There are moments so graphic and disturbing here, you may not notice the tar-black comedy that occasionally gurgles to the surface, and that would be totally fine, as the film’s putrid tonal melange functions on a few different levels, ranging from melodrama to outright shock.

Rugna rigorously builds the narrative reality in the text and subtext, rendering the truth of this fantastical iteration of recognizable earthly life tantalizingly ambiguous. He also teases out strong performances from key cast members, developing the subtle sibling dynamic between Pedro and Jimi, between them and their mother (played amusingly by Paula Rubensztein), and between Pedro and his children, one of whom is a physically disabled teen (Emilio Vodanovich) who functions as both emotional linchpin and borderline-ingenious plot device. Notably, Rugna also shows some restraint, resisting the temptation to turn When Evil Lurks into an outright gorefest, assuring that the imagery he does unleash is potent and memorable. It’s a wild and chaotic movie that’s hard to shake, delivering the type of horror that’s so good, it just might ruin your day. 

Our Call: When Evil Lurks is inspired and immersive, thoughtfully composed visually, and, most importantly, crazy as hell. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.