If I could build a wall around you
I could control the thing that you do
But I couldn't kill the will within you
And it never shows
The place where evil grows
Evil grows in the dark
Where the sun it never shines
Evil grows in cracks and holes
And lives in people's minds
When Evil Lurks (Spanish: Cuando acecha la maldad) is a 2023 Argentine supernatural psychological horror film written and directed by Demián Rugna. An international co-production of Argentina and the United States, the film stars Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Salomon, Luis Ziembrowski, Silvia Sabater and Marcelo Michinaux. In a remote village, two brothers find a demon-infected man just about to give birth to evil itself. They decide to get rid of the man but merely succeed in spreading the chaos. In 2021, the screenplay for When Evil Lurks won the Runner Up Prize at the Sitges Pitchbox, an international pitch event hosted by Filmarket Hub and the Sitges Film Festival.
You wouldn't expect a movie With such a nasty subject matter to be so gorgeous, but this movie is beautiful from start to finish. The movie opens with a somewhat literal human pimple in this part of the world, a real focal point for all the neglect and evil that has been allowed to go unchecked for years. All that pain, all that evil, is hiding under the surface like pus, and the movie's slower-paced opening leaves you waiting intention for that pimple to finally pop. It reminds me of another one of my supernatural favorites THE DARK AND THE WICKED, in the way that it mostly focuses on its characters while still managing to deliver some genuinely frightening spooks.
And then, of course, the pimple finally pops in one of the most disturbing scenes I've seen in a very long time. There's a theme throughout of passing the buck, shruging off your responsibilities, throwing your hands to the wind, and calling it good enough. I think this movie is most easily compared to TERRIFIED and THE DARK AND THE WICKED, but I can say without question that this movie is better than both of those films.
1000000/10
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