Where Evil Lurks is an Disturbingly Human Horror

We here at No But Listen have been accused of being a purely horror site on many occasions. It’s an accusation with some merit, and one that I ultimately take responsibility for. Lou is the expert of the genre, the deep-dives into and lists will tell you that, but it’s my fault that we write so much about it. I was supposed to bring a bit more variety than I have but just before we started the site I got the horror bug. That part is Lou’s fault. Before meeting her, I was happy to bypass the genre entirely after I saw Drag Me To Hell in theatres and nearly had a nervous breakdown. With Lou, I explored the classics, slashics, the nasties, and the folk, and loved the way it made me think while terrifying the wits out of me. So I had to write about it in between Batman and Marvel. I couldn’t not. Then the inevitable happened. As much as I still love horror, it has been a long time since anything truly rocked my psyche. Then, I watched Where Evil Lurks.

Put simply, this Argentine chiller about a community taken over by an malevolent spirt thanks to the inaction of a pair of brothers fucked me right the hell up. No need for fancy talk, I’m still having flashbacks to that dog. Argentine director, Demián Rugna, is no stranger to haunting images: his debut, Terrified, centred around the unforgettable presence of a dead boy freshly emerged from his grave and sitting at his favourite spot at the dining table. Terrified is good, but Where Evil Lurks got under my skin. Why? Because nearly every bad thing that happens in the film could be avoided if each character wasn’t suffering from some form of denial about the situation.

The premise sees two brothers, Pedro and Jamie, lured into the woods around their property when they hear and see the light from gunshots. They find a dismembered body of a “Cleaner” – someone in charge of exorcizing demons since demon possession has become a way of life. The demon in question, of disgustingly brilliant design, has been left for over a year by the police without the knowledge of the people of the surrounding land. The brothers and their landlord decide to get the demon as far away as possible, anyone but a Cleaner disposing of it would unleash the evil on the land. The demon falls out of the truck at an unknown point and the three decide that it’s someone else’s problem – denial from the police, from the family of the person possessed, and the brothers and landlord in disposing of it. There are rules for how this can be done and no one follows them.

Evil typically thrives on weakness, and in Pedro and Jamie, it has a feast. Pedro, shown as somewhat stoic in the first ten minutes, is actually a deeply depressed and disturbed man who nearly killed his own children in a murder-suicide attempt. This make his quest to save his children once the evil is released all the more doomed. Oh, and the children. Mostly left in the background, each succumbs and is used by the demon in many disturbing ways. Let’s just say I haven’t rooted about in a tub of Pringles since I watched it. Pedro ignores nearly every right decision in this film, almost to the point where if it didn’t reinforce the theme I would be calling bullshit. Yet, he’s not a superhero, an exorcist or a cryptozoologist who has some idea of what to do when a kaiju turns up. He’s just a weak man. That might be the scariest part of all.

Rugna delivers on something beyond the horrifying monster design and unsettling premise with a frustratingly human horror that crawls under the skin and stays there.

(header image via IMDB)