When Evil Lurks - Review

Hello, my fellow movie watchers. First of all, I'd like to say thank you to everyone that supported my previous movie review featuring Abigail. And as I mentioned in that article, I'd like to review more horror-themed movies as I've been out of the loop for a while now.

source
So now I'm going to review one of the top horror movies of 2023, When Evil Lurks. Here's my TL;DR review of the movie - What the f#@& did I just saw?

Now for a more elaborate review, When Evil Lurks is a Argentinian-American co-production movie, according to Wikipedia. There are a lot of hidden gems within these types of movies like Rec. There's something about the non-Hollywood quality of film that makes it more genuine. I guess I'm just tired of big budget releases that fall into cliches.

source
My biggest pet-peeve against horror movies is the overuse of jumpscares in order to induce fear to the audience. This is why I hate Insidious a lot. But that's just my personal preference and I know many like those kinds of movies. This is why I was glad to discover that When Evil Lurks did not rely on petty jumpscares but chose a different approach to instill dread to the viewers.

source
The tagline in the poster says, "There's no point in praying." And that's exactly how you can describe the plot of this movie. It's a bit different from other movies of the same genre due to the way they tackled possession. Although the exact process was not fully explained, being possessed is a bit similar to how a virus spreads, where there is a chance of infection when you are in close contact with a possessed or the things that were exposed to it.

source
There are a couple of shocking moments in this film, which I would rather not spoil for those who have yet to watch. And I must say, some scenes really hit hard especially if you're a parent. I can relate to the protagonist who despite knowing what were the right actions to do, his judgment gets clouded when his children's lives were at stake. When Evil Lurks doesn't shy away from subjecting animals and children to horrible circumstances. And when I say horrible, I mean horrible-horrible circumstances. And each of these moments slowly instills a feeling of dread and hopelessness to the viewers. And despite my years of movie-watching experience, I failed to predict how the plot would unfold.

When Evil Lurks is a nice deviation from the typical Hollywood horror movies. I'd say it's a must-watch, at least once, if you're a fan of the horror genre.