When Evil Lurks

There's something special about dusk in October that you don't get any other time. I'm not even talking about the sunsets, beautiful as they are, I mean the night skies have a certain glow to them that has eery beauty to it. Did I mention I love this time of year? And don't get me started on how excited I am about when the leaves start changing color. I think I've said this before, but I loved living in Tampa. However, the worst thing about it was that it never felt like fall. I think that was the time when I was homesick the most. Thankfully, I still had horror movies. Speaking of which, let's talk about...

When Evil Lurks (2023)

I had come across this movie while looking at the highest-rated horror movies on IMDB. After reading the synopsis and different topic titles that mention this movie on Reddit, I decided to give it a chance. I made sure not to read any reviews because, like Frank Costanza, I prefer to go in fresh. I did see that it was made in Argentina, and Terrified, one of my favorite and scariest horror movies I've seen, was also made in that country. It was one of those times when I felt pretty confident in my choice.

This movie isn't one where I can give you a more detailed synopsis; it's best to keep this one generic. Summed up, two brothers come across what's called a "rotten." It's a person possessed by a demon. It's pretty destructive in that state, but if you kill it, especially by using a gun, you will release it into the world, and things will get very bad. The demon can still possess other people and do evil, but it's mostly contained to that decaying or "rotten" vessel. It needs a professional called a "Cleaner" to take care of them for good.

That's enough synopsis because I think giving you more would be confusing. Let me say this before I continue: this movie hits hard. I've mentioned in the past that Halloween III had balls, considering the victims were kids, but holy crap, this movie is insane. There's a scene when the protagonist, Pedro, says "screw it" and decides to leave the town and get away from the evil. I'm impressed, a smart character! He stops at his ex-wife's house to scoop up his kids. While there, he's arguing about taking them, and the movie keeps going to an ominous shot. You know the one, the ones horror movies use to let you know that something is about to happen and it's not going to be good.

The camera switches between the two former spouses, and then a shot of a little girl and her big dog. We see their backs in the foreground and the hallway leading to the kitchen in the background. The movie keeps going to this shot until suddenly the dog attacks the girl. It's like someone flipped a switch; one second it's just sitting there, and then, like a lightning flash, he leaps at the girl's face, teeth first. I audibly gasped and put my hand to my mouth, and kept it there for about five minutes. I did this KNOWING, something was about to happen. Eventually, we see the dog carrying the girl's body away with its teeth, while violently swinging her back and forth. It's so sudden and shocking. I've never had a movie moment affect me the way that scene did.

And the movie is just getting warmed up! Later, the dad comes across the dog and shoots it. Next, the camera switches to the mom who has reunited with her daughter, who doesn't have a scratch on her. She then whispers to her mom that her dad is coming and he's going to kill them. Thirty seconds later, he crashes his car into them!

This movie doesn't pull its punches for one second. It's not coming out, throwing jabs to soften your defenses for a knockout later, no, this movie is throwing haymakers from the opening bell. It's so brutal, but somehow doesn't manage to become gratuitous. While it can be extremely violent, it never uses the horrible stuff you're seeing as a cheap way to gross you out or as an attempt to be edgy like the Terrifier series. All the violence has a purpose. It shows you the power of this entity, and it ratchets up the insanity to let you know how vital it is that this thing is stopped. If this demon can wield its power like this before it's born, imagine what it can do when the chains are off.

I have to give it a lot of credit; it does a whole lot of cool things. One of my favorite scenes happens pretty early in the movie. Ruiz, the sketchy landlord who comes across "The Rotten," but can't bring himself to shoot it, finds out that one of his goats is possessed. Ruiz goes outside with his rifle and shoots once in the air, and all the goats scatter, except for one. And what happens next is so damn effective, I'm getting chills thinking about it. One goat is staring right at him, not scared at all about the gunfire. Ruiz then aims the rifle at it, but it slowly walks up to him, staring him down, and then rests its forehead on the gun barrel. The thing is daring him to shoot while his pregnant wife pleads with him not to fire because the evil will only spread. The way it walks up to Ruiz is so chilling, I absolutely loved it. What happens next, I didn't love. Ruiz fires, and his wife immediately slams an ax into his face. Once he's dead, she walks away and hits herself in the face with the blade of the ax multiple times until she mercifully succumbs. It's not one hit either; she does it slowly and methodically, and it takes several whacks. Dear God, that was difficult to watch.

It also does a lot of cool things with its lore. The brothers eventually meet a "Cleaner" who tells them that Pedro's son Jair is possessed, but they don't need to worry yet. You see, Jair is autistic, and the demon doesn't know how to handle someone with autism. It's something different and pretty cool. Not only that, it leads to something big later in the movie.

I also liked that, for most of the movie, the protagonists were smart. They quickly realize that whatever this is, it is way beyond them, so they decide to get out of dodge. Pedro witnesses his ex-wife and her new husband's daughter come back from the attack unscathed, and what does he do? He steals her car and nopes right out of there as fast as he can. He knows you don't walk away from that, and whatever is standing in front of them is bad news. I appreciated a movie where our protagonists are smart, but as I'll get to later, it doesn't last.

This movie does so much right and is genuinely scary at moments. Pedro gets a call from his wife, despite Pedro seeing her get burgered by the car earlier. The call starts normally, but then gets threatening, and she tells him that she'll see him soon. Well, she makes good on that promise, and jumps out of the window with her and Pedro's son and disappears. When we see her again, she's walking down the road picking the brain out of his skull and eating it like it's a bag of popcorn! Pedro's brother then runs her down, and she delivers another cryptic and terrifying message with her head sticking through the glass and just a horribly gross makeup job to show off what she's been through. Like, I said, haymakers.

If you don't want spoilers, skip to the final paragraph, because I need to talk about this.

Then we get to the finale, and I don't think I've ever been madder at an ending. One of the rules the movie gives you is to be wary of kids because the demon likes them and they're susceptible to it. At one point, a young girl tells them "The Rotten" is at a nearby house, and Pedro fucking loses it. He jumps out of his truck and starts to beat the shit out of her. He's full-on punching her in the face. When the Cleaner calms him down, they go inside a school and find the Rotten hidden underneath the stage. At this point, several kids are watching them, and the Cleaner is warning him not to listen to them.

While he's trying to get to the Rotten, the same girl who got those hands earlier, who he KNOWS lied to him earlier, convinces him to leave the room to grab an ax. Despite pleas from the Cleaner, he scurries off to another room and gets locked in. The kids then murder the Cleaner and break all her equipment. So what does Pedro do next? He kills the Rotten, and the demons get born.

I was so pissed off at that ending. He 100% knows that this girl lied to him; in fact, when they first met, he started wailing on her because he THOUGHT she was lying and trying to lure him away. Now he KNOWS she's a liar, but listens to her anyway. This is the worst case of Plot-Induced Stupidity I've ever seen. While reading more about it, I've seen some people defend it, saying he was already possessed at that point, but I don't buy it. If that's what the director was going for, it's terrible writing because it just comes out of nowhere. Granted, he's clearly unhinged at this point, but not listening to the one person who knows what's going on so you can listen to a girl practically wearing an "I'm Possessed" sign is so frustrating. It ruined a LOT of goodwill it had built up before this moment.

Plus, I was so pissed off, I didn't even notice a very cool scene after this nonsense. The grandma is sitting in a house, and all of a sudden, Jair walks in and speaks for the first time in the whole movie, and is walking under his own power like nothing's wrong. I was so annoyed by that point, my only reaction was, "Now whose this guy?"

It went way over my head that the kid who couldn't move, couldn't talk, and could barely vocalize was now completely figured out and taken over by the demon. It was such a chilling scene, but it didn't click with me until I read the Wikipedia page. I had given up on the movie and was too annoyed to pay attention.

I thought it was great and spectacularly frightening until the end, where everything came crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane. This was so close to being great.

4 Dr. Chainsaws!