‘When Evil Lurks’ Review: Demonic Doings Spread Like Wildfire In an Unpredictable Thriller
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic The other demonic possession movie opening this week, “When Evil Lurks” is unlikely to steal major box-office thunder from “The Exorcist: Believer.” But Argentine genre specialist Demian Rugna’s latest is no mere opportunistic cash-in, either, with its own distinctive and non-formulaic take on the notion of an evil spirit that strikes like a malignant disease.
IFC Films is releasing this uneven but engrossing, sometimes startling horror thriller to several hundred U.S. theaters on October 6.
Shudder’s first Spanish-language original production begins streaming on that platform October 27. Rugna had an international breakout five years ago with his third feature “Terrified” (aka “Aterrados”), about a fantastical, lethal infestation in a couple of middle-class Buenos Aires households.
A Guillermo del Toro-produced English-language remake was announced, as well as “Terrified 2,” though neither has yet come to pass. (In the interim, Rugna completed only one directorial segment in the recently released omnibus “Satanic Hispanics.”) Instead, we have this new “contagion” thriller, which trades its predecessor’s supposedly scientifically-explicable menace for a supernatural one, and a domestic suburban setting for a road-trip structure.
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