– After going through important festivals such as Toronto, Sitges (where it won the main prize) and Mar del Plata, the new and powerful feature film by director Last entry, ¡them!! (co-directed by Fabian Forte), You don’t know who you’re talking to. and Horror. With a very positive critical reception locally and internationally, its commercial release is a good challenge to see the power of national horror cinema today.
– Update: The film sold 80,000 tickets in the first 9 days and in its second week in theaters it grows in the number of theaters (it is shown at about 140) and at the box office.
When evil lurks (Argentina-USA/2023). Written and directed by: Damien Rojna. Cast: Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Salomón, Silvina Sabater, Virginia Garofalo, Luis Zimbrowski, Emilio Vodanovich, Marcelo Michino, Paula Robenstein and Desiree Salguero. Photography: Mariano Suarez. Art direction: Laura Aguirreher. Editor: Lionel Kornstein. Music and sound: Pablo Fu. Distributor: BF Paris. Running time: 99 minutes. Suitable for ages 16 and up. Rooms (first week): 116. Rooms (second week): 138.
His Uruguayan teammate Diego Varon had located When evil lurks In the square Toronto Film Festival Top 10 From your coverage of OtrosCines.com, then chosen by many Spanish critics who not only respect, but are also admirers and experts in fiction and horror, as the best film they have seen in Sitges (the official jury shared this opinion). With this background, I then went to a press show on Metrovisión, where I had to sit in the front row in front of the huge number of young fans of this type who were there.
The experience was very satisfying and it obviously survived the dins, but I don’t go so far as to consider it an unusual film, one of the films that changes the paradigm in genre cinema in a country like Argentina. It is clear that Demián Rojna already plays in the first category, not only in national horror but even in international horror (I would not be surprised if he soon ventured to direct a foreign production). In fact When evil lurks (When evil lurks It was released in early October to generate reviews in 659 theaters in the United States, was pre-purchased by the streaming company Shudder, and was said to have toured dozens of major festivals.
When evil lurks It could be part of what is generally known as folk horror, although in this case it would be something like the horror of the country, since it tells the story of Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomón), two brothers who live in a lost rural area where everything is very vile, basic, primitive, visceral and pathetic (we will soon discover that the past of the Pedro family is painful). In this context, having found a mutilated corpse, they discover that there is in the house of a nearby “embichado” (sic), an obese, injured and mutilated, brutal-looking man, who will be the victim of some kind of satanic possession (there is also a rather scatological area here). Faced with the concrete threat that he could “give birth” to this evil force, they have no better idea with a neighbor named Arnaldo Ruiz (Luis Zimbrowski) than to load him into the back bed of a pickup truck, travel several hundred kilometers and get rid of him. But, of course, that would be far from the final solution they expected and would become just the beginning of their many problems.
When evil lurks It is like a Pacman that devours all the elements and subtypes of horror: there will be various possessions (we are also talking about the “incarnation”), inexplicable accidents, supernatural situations typical of mythology and rural religiosity, demonic goats, evil goats, demonic children and, of course, – a festival of cruel violence (including axes), blood and viscera that will delight bloodsuckers.
Rojna, who ventures without prejudice into the terrain of Lucio Volci, M. Night Shyamalan and Leonardo Favio, has courage and talent: he gradually shows tremendous conviction, although at the moment he errs for excessive accumulation and a certain tendency to exaggerate the design always tends to the influence of music and sound effects. And n tone the performances, and in the amount of layers and drifts with which they feed the film and move it forward.
But at the same time, it’s hard not to admire a film that never ceases to pay attention or dazzle. In Argentine cinema where horror cinema is usually very predictable, built with few ideas and already well tucked in, Rojava boasts enormous dramatic and visual images. Its present is wonderful and its future at the moment has no ceiling in sight.
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