20 Incredible Modern Horror Movies That Came Out Of NOWHERE
5. When Evil Lurks
Like Talk to Me, Demián Rugna’s successor to 2017’s Terrified – When Evil Lurks – is a reinvigorating take on the possession picture that doesn’t merely rip off The Exorcist. Instead, it’s an astonishingly merciless and bleak account of brothers Pedro and Jaime racing against time to stop an evil spirit from taking control of their small village before being born.
It’s quite engaging from the jump, with the siblings encountering the bedridden host to the demon – called a Rotten – whose grotesqueness is legitimately vomit-inducing. Afterward, Rugna continuously escalates the suspense, viciousness, and hopelessness of this world with a handful of extremely shocking scenarios.
Depicting a pregnant woman burying an axe in the face of her husband before doing the same to herself is horrific enough, right?
Well, that’s nothing compared to When Evil Lurks’ two most jaw-droppingly sadistic scenes. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that one involves a French Mastiff suddenly mauling a little girl, and the other involves a possessed mother eating brains from her dead son’s skull as she carries him down the road.
Naturally, the climax of the movie – involving Pedro’s mother and autistic son – is no less startling and cruel.
Rugna fleshes out his nihilistic carnage with richly ominous folklore, too, cementing When Evil Lurks as one of the most unflinchingly visceral and disheartening possession movies of all time.