Children of the Corned Beef

When Evil Lurks (Demián Rugna, 2023)

Hollywood has commonly been lacking the required mean-spirited streak to appease desensitised fans of  horror cinema. In order to cast a net and attract the majority, the output is usually safe, soft and homogenised. Thankfully, there are foreign and independent film makers out there to counter the Disneyfied dross being churned out; Rob Jabbaz's The Sadness (2021/2022) and Damian Leone's Terrifier 2 (2023) are recent examples. Argentinian film maker Demián Rugna's When Evil Lurks (2023) is the latest to balance the scales with what's probably the best horror film of the year.

When Evil Lurks stands out from many of its peers for having the cojones to have all its characters as fair game to the horrors that unfold. As a result, it's still shocking when certain scenes are acutely telemarked and still landing a haymaker on your senses. This is a deeply nihilistic film; evoking the anything goes attitude of 1970s horror like Who Can Kill a Child? (1976). There is no safety barrier, it's pure destructive brutality. Critics will list some of Lucio Fulci's films as obvious inspirations, but I spotted traces of other notable horror films, such as Prince of Darkness (1987) and Hereditary (2018) in there, too.

Set in a rural Argentenian province where folks are deeply superstitious, the film's two major characters; brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón) encounter a grossly bloated individual named Uriel, who is said to be one of the rotten. This is the colloquial term for demonically possessed. The brothers, along with neighbouring land owner Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski), are given the unenviable task of dealing with Uriel. Like every horror film, things don't go to plan. 

The film introduces seven golden rules which must be adhered to when dealing with the rotten. If they aren't dealt with properly, and more importanly, by an expert, then the demonic evil spreads. Thankfully, with this being a horror film, the rules are constantly broken. As beasts and humans are possessed this allows Rugna to showcase some shockingly extreme moments that you don't see very often in contemporary horror. It's almost farcical watching Pedro making bad decision after bad decision and leaving a trail of death in his wake, but they do lend to a compelling film. Children being subjected to either being victims or perpretators are easily the most disturbing highlights of the film. One scene involving a mother carrying her infant son along a road is pure nightmare fuel. Definitely not something that will be forgotten easily.

It's not a perfect film, however. When Evil Lurks can feel disjointed at times, as it plays a balancing act with its cumbersome handling of multiple characters and locations for the sake of keeping everything breezy, along with a second ending that feels almost trivial in comparison to what occurs earlier. Still, these flaws don't ruin the film, as Rugna's main focus seems to be all about bringing back some utterly nihilistic and misanthropic brutality that's evidently missing in many of today's contemporary horror films. As such, the film is a triumphant success.

Really hope the film gets a physical release and not rot on Shudder like Deadstream (2022) has been doing in my region.