If there’s one sub-genre of horror film that is almost guaranteed to give me the willies, it’s movies that deal with demonic possession.
I was raised Catholic and grew up with a healthy fear of the Devil. I’m not quite sure where my religious leanings lie nowadays but I’m still weary of Old Scratch. It’s like Blood, Sweat and Tears sing: “Swear there ain't no heaven, and I pray there ain't no hell.”
Last weekend, WHEN EVIL LURKS lurked in theaters. The film, from director Demián Rugna, will stream on Shudder later this month. I absolutely love, love, love this unabashedly scary horror film from Argentina. It’s smart, scary, surprising, and weird. Ezequiel Rodriguez and Demián Salomon play Pedro and Jimmy, two brothers who tend to their ranch on the edge of town. Their lives are upended when they discover one of their neighbors is possessed and has become a bloated monstrosity and is just about ready to pop and unleash the evil inside of him onto their community. In a desperate attempt to get away from the impending damnation, the brothers try to escape - stopping to pick up Pedro’s estranged family. Things do not go to plan.
I love the fact that the characters in WHEN EVIL LURKS exist in a world in which the Devil and his dark forces are not bound by faith, but exist in full knowledge. Possession is real, there are rules to avoid it, and society - or what’s left of it - has adopted a new lifestyle in order to try its best to survive in a world perpetually in the shadow of Hell. It’s like COVID - it’s here, it’s not going anywhere and we just have to learn to live with it. At least COVID won’t make you eat your loved ones. In WHEN EVIL LURKS, the Devil is real and, if anything, the great question is whether or not God cares about humanity’s plight enough to stop him.
Rugna fills his film with such unrelenting darkness and despair that audiences can’t help but shrink into their seats - only to be jolted back out of them by the shocking gunshots of unexpected violence. It’s obvious that Rugna understands the secret to making a movie about Evil is understanding Evil is spelled with a capital E. It’s a force that cannot be tricked or escaped. Rugna is scared of the Devil and WHEN EVIL LURKS will make you scared too.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER, a new sequel to William Friedkin’s legendary horror film from director David Gordon Green.
Unlike a lot of other folks, I adore Green’s HALLOWEEN trilogy. I thought Green absolutely nailed the three films and created some mighty fine deconstructions of trauma, anger and hopelessness smuggled into a meaty slasher film with some truly gnarly kills. With his new EXORCIST sequel, though, I worry that Green - perhaps weighed down by the criticisms he received on his previous forway into horror - pulled his punches.
THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is a warm-cuddly hug of a horror film, almost indistinguishable from the tamest of scary movies being produced by contemporary faith-based films. In the film, two young girls go missing only to reappear three days later head-over-heels possessed by a demon. It’s up to a supergroup of multi-denominational Christians and faith healers to put their powers together and save the day. There are exactly two moments in the film where the Green who directed the HALLOWEEN trilogy pokes his head out of the sand - I won’t spoil them here but they are deliciously dark and mean-spirited and exactly what I was hoping from a David Gordon Green-directed THE EXORCIST sequel. The rest of the movie? A boring slog that puts too much faith in the idea that wildly different religions would have respect enough for each other to work together for a common bond. Or maybe I’m too much of a cynic. Either way, I was left unimpressed.
Earlier, I mentioned the scary movies being released by contemporary Christian studios. Guess what? Some of them are actually kinda good.
NEFARIOUS was released earlier this summer by directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon. A revelatory Sean Patrick Flannery plays a convicted serial killer on death row. He’s set for execution but, before he’s put down, a psychiatrist must evaluate his mental state and declare him sane. Too bad the serial killer claims to be possessed by a demon. The movie is available to rent from most major VOD platforms and I’ll warn you - it’s super-duper Christan. The real kicker is that the film takes its sweet time revealing its religious intent - it isn’t until about halfway through the film that the demon starts taunting the psychiatrist with warnings of aborted babies crying out in hell.
The secret to enjoying NEFARIOUS is either being super duper Christian yourself or being able to put yourself into the mindset of somebody who is. Like the fact that THE WITCH is even scarier if you imagine watching it as a 17th century puritanical, NEFARIOUS is scarier if you believe in Hell or have any lingering doubts about the subject. It’s a movie that understands that the Devil is a trickster and will say and do anything if it means you lose your faith.
Sean Patrick Flanery’s amazing performance and some tightly wound chills might just help you ignore the faith-shaped egg the movie is nesting. Seriously, this movie gave me the creeps - and I swear it’s just just because Glen Beck makes a cameo.
Finally, there’s THE DEVIL CONSPIRACY, released in January. Currently streaming on Hulu, this film is maybe a faith-based film. Honestly, I can’t tell. It feels like something that fell out of an alternate reality where LEFT BEHIND is the most-read book of all time and Asylum movies have the budget of the MCU. The movie is about Jesus' cloned baby being possessed by Satan. It’s a hard-R-rated faith film where giant angels that look ripped from a Zach Snyder film glower and the Shroud of Turan is used to bring about the apocalypse. I kind of love it. It’s just completely batshit crazy and, in a just world, it would be a movie that everybody spent the last year talking about.
When I was a kid, I used to lie awake at night, afraid to move because I thought the devil was hiding underneath my bed. I would pee my pants, too afraid to use the restroom. No amount of scientific curiosity over the last 35 years will ever completely eradicate the fear of Hell from my psyche. Thankfully, as a fan of horror movies, I like being scared so I can only hope that filmmakers keep making movies like WHEN EVIL LURKS and THE DEVIL CONSPIRACY.