When Evil Lurks

Staying away from the all the cliches of possession in movies, When Evil Lurks offers a chilling psychological tale of a world gone mad which begins with the discovery of a dead body by Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and his brother Jimi (Demián Salomón) leading them to a nearby neighbor whose son is grotesquely possessed. Known as a rotten, when his body dies the unborn demon will rise. Unable to simply kill the rotten because of the rules with dealing with an unborn demon, Pedro, Jimi, and their neighbor Ruiz (Luis Ziembrowski) take it on themselves to move the body before it dies only leading a chain of unfortunate events descending outside the countryside and affecting the nearby town where Pedro's ex-wife (Virginia Garófalo), children (Marcelo Michinaux and Emilio Vodanovich), and mother reside. 

We don't get spitting pea soup, spinning heads, or backward crabwalks. Instead the movie is fueled mostly by the unbridled fear of Pedro, the incredulity of everyone else, and a series of truly disturbing examples of the rotten's influence at play (one involving a young girl and her dog and another a stroll down the country lane after dark are particularly memorable and so unnerving you may question what you are actually witnessing).

Through the discussions Pedro has with his brother, family, local police (who largely ignore his claims), a child's nursery rhyme, and Jimi's friend (Silvina Sabater) who alone suspects the depth of trouble the town is in, we learn a bit about the rottens and the rules with dealing with them, and we gets gruesome examples of what happens when those rules are ignored such as the unfortunate end to the Ruiz family. When Evil Lurks isn't a film about good combating evil as much as an attempt simply to survive the mania which descends when the pieces of your life are taken from you bit by bit.

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• Title: When Evil Lurks
• IMDb: link