Terrified director Demian Rugna‘s new horror film When Evil Lurks drew comparisons to John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness) and Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead when it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival – which are some excellent movies to be compared to. A wider audience will get the chance to see When Evil Lurks when IFC Films gives it a theatrical release on October 6th, putting it in direct competition with the Universal Pictures release of The Exorcist: Believer. Three weeks later, on October 27th, the film will also be available to watch on the Shudder streaming service.
According to Variety, When Evil Lurks deals with “timeless horror concepts” while “adding contemporary twists”. Scripted by Rugna, the story plays out in a remote village where two brothers find a demon-infected man just about to give birth to evil itself. In a time when exorcism looks to be of little use to ward off evil, after warning the neighbors in town, they decide to get rid of the man but merely succeed in helping him to deliver the inferno.
Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Silvina Sabater, Virginia Garofalo, Paula Rubinsztein, and Luis Dziembrowski star.
Fernando Díaz’s Machaco Films, Roxana Ramos’s Aramos Cine, and Agustina Chiarino and Fernando Epstein of Mutante co-produced the film. When Evil Lurks marks the first production for the La Puerta Roja label, a joint venture partnership between Machaco and Aramos.
Rugna had this to say about his new film when it was first announced: “When Evil Lurks will be a double challenge for me and the viewer – complex to stage and also very stark for anyone who watches it. I needed to leave the scheme of a contained production to break with everything. This movie will be my relief, a release of disturbing images that have been accumulating in my head over the years like a pressure cooker.”
Díaz said, “We’re trying to tell a macabre story with an extremely oppressive and realistic atmosphere, but with a frantic rhythm, without abandoning a strong narrative. A genuine universe that re-signifies the tales of evil and curses; a rural environment on a monotonous plain, interrupted by a series of images and extremely lurid sequences.“
A trailer for When Evil Lurks can be seen at the top of this article, and a teaser trailer and poster can be found at the bottom.
Will you be watching When Evil Lurks when it’s released in October? Let us know by leaving a comment below.