
Cuando acecha la maldad, translated When Evil Lurks, is a 2023 Argentinian supernatural horror film written and directed by Demián Rugna.
In a remote farming village in Argentina, the Yazurlo brothers, Pedro and Jaime, discover that one of their neighbours has been infected by a demon. After recklessly dumping the man far away from their land, the pair decide to collect their family and flee from a possible outbreak of demonic possessions.
The film When Evil Lurks shows examples of the following tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: The adults are so engrossed in their own argument that they don't even register Vicky's vicious mauling by Roger until Santino starts screaming, and even then they drag their feet about it.
- Ambiguous Situation: The reason Pedro is both viewed with suspicion by the police and has a restraining order against him is because, according to Sabrina, he tried to kill their son Jair supposedly for being autistic. That being said, we only have Sabrina’s word to go by it, and one of the times she says it is after she was possessed. Jaime also responds to Mirta’s comment on these claims by saying Sabrina made them up. But Jaime has just as much of a reason to lie as Sabrina does, given that he’s loyal to his brother, and it being implied that part of his loyalty stems from guilt over a possible affair between him and Sabrina.
- Arc Symbol: Stick figures holding hands, often drawn in red, are a recurring motif.
- Author Appeal: Apple-flavored ice cream is referenced several times. It's writer-director Demián Rugna's favorite flavor.
- Beard of Sorrow: Implied in the case of Pedro, who wears a big, bushy beard. His ex-wife has a restraining order against him preventing him from seeing his sons, and he's disliked in the community. He apparently did something terrible four years ago and has been a deadbeat dad ever since.
- Be Careful What You Say: As the 7 rules state, people avoided using the word demon to refer to any possession insidents. Instead, they used a plethora of expressions, such as "encarnado" (translate incarnate, which indicated the creature's goal of gaining physical form), "embichado" (a word derived from the Hispanic expression "tiene el bicho dentro", literally translated as "has the bug inside", where the word "bicho/bug" here stands for the devil or a demon) or just using the word "evil" in general.
- Brick Joke: Pedro takes his kids away on the pretense of going out for apple ice cream. A later scene shows Pedro frustrated by not being able to get any, while Jair gets upset, and the last scene starts with Pedro, after all the chaos, uncharitably slamming a cup of apple ice cream in front of Jair.
- Car Fu: Sabrina is the victim of this on two separate occasions: a possessed Leo drives into her and pins her against their house, killing her. Then, when she comes back possessed herself, Jaime hits her with a car after seeing her eat Santino.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Ruiz almost runs over a kid on a bike when transporting Uriel. The kid reappears in the final act of the film.
- Corrupt Politician: The reason for the the police being useless is chalked up to the Mayor wanting a way to drive Ruiz and the residents of his farmland away, so that he could sell it off to the highest bidder afterward. It's also hinted that he may have some involvement with the murder of the Cleaner sent to deal with Uriel in furtherance of this goal.
- Crapsack World: Apparently, possession is an uncommon but well-established phenomena all over the world, meaning demons are actively trying to secure a physical body to wreak havoc at all times. Corrupt politicians are implied to use the threat of demons to drive small farmers off their land to sell at a profit, and the church has lost all influence due to its attempts to garner power by faking possessions, only to be completely useless once real possessions began.
- Creepy Child: Oh, so many. Little Vicky possessed or recreated by the demon after her death gleefully tells her mother that her father is about to drive into them, and dances in the street after he does. Uriel is sheltered in a rural school, populated by several possessed children. And then, of course, there's the demon child.
- Death of a Child: All of the children we see either die or are possessed.
- Definitely Just a Cold: Mirta, an expert in possession, tries to warn Jaime that Jair is possessed. Jaime dismisses it as symptoms of Jair's autism - until he realizes that Jair's wrists are bent painfully out of shape.
- Demonic Possession: This flavour of it acts like an infection, and is dubbed "The Rotten". The setting hints at this being a rare but well-established phenomena, as towns have strict protocols on what to do in the event of a Rotten appearing.
- Devil, but No God: Prayer and holy rituals have no effect on the possessed. Pedro asserts that the Christian church is "dead." Mirta laments that she and her fellow cleaners helped destroy faith. The tagline for the film is "When evil lurks, there's no point in praying."
- Disability Immunity: For some reason the demons have great trouble with autistic individuals. Jair spends hours possessed before the demon works out how to control his body, and when it does, it can't act like him at all and gives the game away instantly. Unfortunately, the only person who sees him acting strangely is his elderly grandmother. By the time Pedro and Jaime return, the demon has perfected its Jair impression.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The contaminated brothers leaving their land against advice and bringing their family members into contact with the demonic infection might bring to mind the people who broke lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The issue of poor rural farmers being exploited and then abandoned by a system that sees their land as more valuable than the people on it has parallels to the Argentinians whose families develop birth defects due to overexposure to pesticides and are then swept under the rug.
- Downer Ending: Both the brothers survive, but Jair is possessed and pretty much everyone else is dead. What's more, a demon child has been born thanks to Pedro's rash actions, and who knows what chaos and terror he will bring. It's little wonder that the final shot is Pedro kneeling in front of his house and screaming in anguish.
- Driven to Suicide: When Ruiz decides to kill one of his possessed goats with a firearm, his wife Jimena realizes that he has doomed them all. So she kills him with an axe and commits suicide with the same one while she is pregnant, so that her family at least cannot suffer a worse fate. Either that, or the shooting of the goat caused the demon to move into her.
- Establishing Character Moment: Pedro reacts to distant gunshots by cogently analyzing them for clues and then outlines a plan to respond, establishing him as savvy and decisive, traits that will gradually fade over the course of the film.
- Failure Hero: While neither of the brothers are successful Pedro stands out for getting his family killed and/or possessed by bringing the infection straight to them, losing his temper and abandoning Mirta to be killed so he can grab a useless weapon, then finally killing Uriel by smashing his head in (rather than a clean stab through the nape of the neck), letting the demon child be born.
- Fatal Flaw: Pedro's is his impatience. Whenever he is presented with a problem, he acts immediately, with no regard for the consequences. This directly causes the Downer Ending.
- Foreshadowing:
- Pedro analyses the distant gunshots that killed the cleaner as being made by a revolver. Jaime also spots a box of bullets near the infected Uriel. Later in the film, Jaime deduces that Eduardo is armed when he turns up at their farm, and forces him to hand over his gun, which is a revolver. In the end, Eduardo reveals that he was the one who killed the cleaner.
- Jair's drawing shows a red figure hand-in-hand with others, grandma Sara's necklace features family figures in a chain, and red paper-chain figures are seen in the school. This imagery foretells the blood-covered birthed demon child walking free with the other children, which comes to pass before the end.
- The possessed Jair drapes a lambskin rug over himself before cannibalizing his grandmother, indicating that he is a "wolf in sheep's clothing".
- Mirta tells a story of a possessed individual vomiting up the remains of their family after cannibalizing them. At the end of the film, Jair vomits up parts of his grandmother, and her very distinctive gold charm.
- God Is Dead: Demons appear to be free to rampage with no fear of divine intervention. It's indicated the church's influence has collapsed as a result of its impotence in the face of the demonic threat. Later, Mirta states that humans’ constant abuse of religion along with the resulting distrust in religion from said abuse is what killed God.
- Gruesome Goat: One of Ruiz' goats becomes infected, and taunts him into shooting it. It's implied Ruiz's wife Jimena realized something was terribly wrong with the normal-looking animal because she recognized that it was a goat that had died in an attack just recently.
- Guns Are Worthless: Guns might kill a possessed individual, but they also spread the possession further.
- Hellhound: Sabrina's family dog, Roger, becomes this after sniffing around Pedro's contaminated clothes.
- Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: Several characters explain that there are seven rules one must strictly follow to avoid being killed or possessed by the demon. This being a horror film, however, all seven rules are broken over the course of the story, each time to disastrous results.
- Do not use electric lights. Santino using an electric nightlight is implied to be how his possessed mother tracks him down and kills him.
- Avoid animals. Ruiz engages with a possessed resurrected goat, and Pedro forgets about his ex-wife's family's dog while removing his tainted clothes, causing the dog to become possessed and attack his wife's daughter.
- Don't touch anything near the possessed. Pedro, Jimmy, and Ruiz all touch Uriel's bedsheets to transport him, causing the demon to target the three of them and their families.
- Don't hurt the rotten. Again, Pedro, Jimmy, and Ruiz accidentally dropping Uriel off a truck is what allows the demon to roam free.
- Don't shoot someone or something who's possessed with a firearm. Ruiz and Leo both get killed or possessed instantly after killing something possessed themselves with guns.
- Don't say the demon's name. Pedro's mother, in explaining this very rule, breaks it by playfully listing various demon names, seemingly attracting the attention of a demon implied to be Azrael, who possesses Jair to kill her that night.
- Don't be afraid. The demon exploits Pedro's fear of losing his family by killing them all off one by one, destroying his sanity in the process.
- Humans Are Flawed: Played for Horror and the Central Theme of the entire movie - making a point that - despite public knowledge of methods to prevent demonic manifestations - humanity is too impulsive, reactionary, or concerned about personal baggage to properly handle or survive a demon apocalypse.
- Idiot Hero: Played for Drama with Pedro. Pedro may be decisive, determined, and resourceful, but he's also impatient, tends not to pay attention to anything other than his immediate task, takes others at their word even when he knows they should be lying, and repeatedly ignores resident expert Mirta... making him the perfect pawn for the demon's manipulations.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Being possessed seems to cause a hankering for human flesh, among other symptoms.
- Kids Are Cruel: Mirta explains, "Evil is drawn to children, and children are drawn to evil."
- Mister Seahorse: The possessed Uriel is spoken of as being pregnant with a demon child. When Pedro eventually kills Uriel, a demonic child rises from his corpse and walks off into the sunrise.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Happens so many times it might as well be a theme.
- In the beginning, Ruiz becomes so determined to ensure that the Rotten doesn’t take over his land that he has a possessed Uriel transported to a different place. This is despite protests from the people around him, including his own wife, Jimena. Not only does the plan go awry when Uriel falls off the back of the truck and disappears on the road, but the possession even returns to his land through one of his goats that had been previously killed. Even while Jimena pleads with him not to shoot the possessed goat because of the rules, he does so anyway and it results in both him and Jimena getting an ax to the face.
- The Yazurlo brothers drop by the house of Pedro’s ex-wife, Sabrina, to pick up Pedro’s sons in an effort to get their family away from the spreading rotten. But Pedro not paying attention to his infected clothes as he’s stripping them off results in the family dog, Roger, getting possesed and mauling Sabrina’s daughter. And as Adults Are Useless shows, neither he, his ex-wife, nor his ex-wife’s current husband notice the brutal mauling that’s happening beside them. It’s also likely that had they stayed put and not tried to collect their relatives, the whole thing wouldn’t have spread as fast as it did.
- Jaime ignores Mirta’s warning on his nephew Jair being possessed, thinking that she's grossly misreading the behavior of an autistic person. Though to be fair, Mirta doesn’t elaborate on the warnings until the second time, which is just as they’re looking for an abducted Santino. Still, he doesn’t inform Pedro of this and they leave the possessed Jair alone with their mother, resulting in her being eaten by her possessed grandson towards the end.
- Pedro follows a possessed girl’s instructions on where to get an ax, so that he could more easily bring Uriel out from within the stage. This is despite Mirta desperately shouting at him not to listen to the possessed girl, the impending birth of a demon child, and having every reason to both heed Mirta’s warnings and doubt the possessed girl. What this ultimately results in is Mirta’s death and the demon child rising from Uriel’s corpse, which may as well bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
- Offing the Offspring:
- The possessed Sabrina kidnaps her youngest son, Santino, and is later seen wandering on the side of the road eating his brains.
- Early in the film, there are mentions of Pedro having attempted to kill his older autistic son, Jair. It explains why he has a restraining order against him and the police’s distrust of him. Jaime, however, claims that Pedro’s ex-wife made up the story to gain custody.
- Our Demons Are Different: Demons have no physical form and are treated like a virus. They possess humans, causing them to bloat and rot. These "Rotten" become the focal point of an infection, spreading demonic possession to people and animals in the surrounding area. Breaking certain rules can accelerate and exacerbate the spread of possessions. Rotten need to be disposed of in a very specific manner involving a strange mechanical device. If they die in a different manner, they can give birth to the possessing demon, granting it a physical form of its own.
- Papa Wolf: Pedro's first priority once it is clear the demons have been let loose is to save his children. It is also a deconstruction, as Pedro's efforts to save them ultimately result in the deaths of most of his family.
- Police Are Useless:
- The Yazurlo brothers appeal to the local police for help, but they dismiss it as "not their problem." They don't even seem to care about an unexplained dismembered body on the possessed man's land, nor the unexplained gunshots heard the night before. It's likely the mayor is paying them off to ignore the problem until the locals are driven out.
- When Pedro flags down the police lieutenant and tells him that Vicky has been attacked by a dog, the officer's response is an incredulous, "You called us about a dog?"
- Shower of Angst: In the end, a traumatized Pedro takes a shower, but he later discovers that the bloody handprint will never wash away.
- Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: The demons repeatedly goad people into killing them, as this only kills one host but lets them spread more easily. Despite knowing this and being warned against it by Mirta, an enraged Pedro kills Uriel, letting the demon child be born.
- Trauma Conga Line: Pedro has to deal with losing his ex-wife, both his sons, and his mother. Made worse by the fact that they probably would have been safe if he'd stayed put in the first place.
- The Unmasqued World: Everyday people and even the police are familiar with Rotten and treat possession as an understood concept. Pedro and Jaime note that the local town has shut off its power and infer that the government has enacted its protocols for demonic events.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Mirta is revealed to not only be a retired Cleaner, but also one of the first, meaning she should be perfectly prepared to deal with the demon problem. Unfortunately, between her finding out about the infestation far too late, and being stuck with the incompetent and stupid Pedro as an assistant, the situation is too much for her skill and results in her death.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- The demons have no qualms about possessing or harming children, and not a single child shown in the film is unscathed by the evil.
- Pedro is desperate enough to beat information out of the possessed children, but he's repeatedly told that that will just make things worse.
- You Will Be Spared: The demon birthed from Uriel spares Pedro for his part in bringing him into existence, though not without marking his forehead with a permanent bloody handprint.
- 0% Approval Rating: Pedro isn't liked by anyone who isn't in his own family, which is repeatedly implied to be due to something terrible he did in the past.
