When Evil Lurks Review
When Evil Lurks might not always be clean or easy to watch, but once you have watched it, I doubt you will ever forget it.
When Evil Lurks is a horror movie that doesn’t try and play by the usual rules.
Plot
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 body, only to end up unintentionally spreading chaos.
Good Points
Ezequiel Rodríguez and Damián Salomón
Possession treated as something physical
Brutal, effective use of gore that actually serves the story
Natural storytelling with no hand-holding
Constant sense of unpredictability
Bad Points
A few minor plot gaps if you overthink it
Characters make some questionable decisions at times
Evil isn’t summoned - it’s already here
When Evil Lurks flips the usual possession formula you might expect to watch from a horror movie, as here, there’s no big ritual, and no dramatic buildup to something arriving - because it’s already there, and worse, it spreads.
The idea of possession as an infection is certainly a simple one, but it does change everything too, as it makes the threat feel so much more physical, where you can’t just pray it away or outsmart it.
Once it’s there, it’s there.
There’s also almost no/very little exposition, and you get no one explaining any the rules - the film just moves, and you have to just figure things out as it goes.
This style of storytelling makes everything feel that much more immediate and keeps you more on edge throughout, because you’re as in the dark as the characters, trying to piece things together while everything gets worse around you.
It’s the kind of approach, that while simple, that can also fall apart if it’s not handled carefully, but here it works incredibly well.
Performances that carry all the tension
Ezequiel Rodríguez as Pedro really portrays the already worn down before things even start feeling, and there’s this constant sense that he’s trying to outrun something - his past, his mistakes - and failing each time.
That weight is what carries through every decision he makes, so even when he gets things wrong, you can kind of relate to the frustration he is feeling.
While Damián Salomón works as a strong counterbalance to this, as he’s not necessarily a more capable character, he’s just more skeptical, more hesitant, and watching both of them unravel as things spiral is where a lot of the film’s impact comes from.
Violence that sticks
When this film gets brutal, it commits.
There are moments here that don’t just shock, and not because they’re trying to be edgy, but because they feel final - when something happens, it matters, so there’s never any easy reset to it all.
I won’t get into specifics, but there are a few scenes that are hard to shake once you’ve seen them, but as mentioned before, it still feels quite natural how everything feels, and for something this dark, it never drifts into exaggerated horror logic either.
Yes, there are decisions that make you question things, but I found myself thinking, would I actually do any better in that situation?
Probably not.
It’s not just about survival
Underneath everything though, the film also has a strong emotional core, as this isn’t just about escaping evil, it’s also about watching people fall apart while you can’t stop it, and that’s where the film really gets uncomfortable - not the violence, not the possession - the helplessness and sadness that is running throughout the film.
There are some small issues, where a few plot details don’t fully track if you stop and pick at them too much, and the pacing dips slightly in places, but the film has enough momentum - and enough impact - that those flaws don’t stick around for long.
Final Verdict
Bleak, brutal, and uncompromising - When Evil Lurks might not always be clean or easy to watch, but once you have watched it, I doubt you will ever forget it.