Avis Metacritic

With this project, Rugna breaks plenty of horror rules and literally writes his own, turning his film into 2023’s most unnerving horror release — and a welcome revival for a subgenre that seemed like it was on its last spindly, clawed, wall-climbing legs.

This is a movie that is both familiar and fresh. Scary, yes, but mostly disturbing, gory, smart, quite expansive, and all around created in the bowels of hell itself.

Delivering scares at a pace that rarely allows one to catch their breath, and with enough gruesome surprises to consistently startle.

This is a film that delights in unspoken terrors and audience misdirection.

Demián Rugna's debut feature, Terrified contains one of the most eerily disturbing scenes in recent cinema history, a moment involving an unwanted guest at a dinner table. His follow-up, When Evil Lurks, confirms that the Argentinian filmmaker knows exactly how to get under your skin.

Even when you then think it may have all settled down, the film twists the knife even further.

This is a dark and timely parable about what happens when trust — among community members, within families, between a government and its people — disintegrates.

It’s an admirably vicious piece of work when it wants to be—although arguably could have gone even further and more frequently.

When Evil Lurks is still one of the most original horror films of recent memory and a pretty convincing argument to turn out the lights when you’re not using them, no matter how scary the dark is, especially out in the sticks.

A fun premise can get a horror film far, and “When Evil Lurks” has one that could be taken to interesting, terrifying places. But rather than lean into what makes its world of demonic diseases intriguing, the film squanders its own potential by leaning into its worst qualities and instincts.