When Evil Lurks 4K 2023 Ultra HD 2160p

Brothers Pedro and Jaime, who are farmers, discover the mutilated body of a cleaner in the forest. Gradually, evil spreads to all the characters.

User Review

Argentinian director Demian Luna's previous film, Paralyzed by Fear, released five years ago, was a striking exercise in storytelling without focal characters—the action moved rapidly from story to story, maintaining a cloying atmosphere of uneasy anticipation, as if something very bad were about to happen. Possessed, released in what seems like a completely different world, looks more familiar: we follow the story of two gloomy brothers from a village trying to rid their home of a demonic curse. But there is still a shift in focus here: evil itself creeps from body to body.

You can interpret this as a metaphor for COVID, or a zombie virus, or infection by the very idea of evil—the essence remains the same. Except that while a zombie virus needs a bite, the insidious COVID-19 only needs airborne droplets, the evil in Runya is more like the Japanese “Curses” or even our perestroika-era “Touch” — sometimes it's enough to just stand nearby, breathe the air in the same room as the possessed, or even touch the clothes of an infected person to become a carrier. Neither prayers nor cotton-gauze bandages can contain such evil.

It seems that in order to survive and keep their families safe, the heroes just need to stay at home and not stick their noses outside (hello, quarantine!) — but no, the brothers seem to be trying to break all seven strange rules that their elderly mother (one of the few sane characters in the film, which, however, does not help her in any way) helpfully dictates to the audience: do not kill the infected, do not turn on the electric lights, do not let animals near the infected, and so on. The existence of these strange rules — and indeed the whole situation with demons — plunges the viewer into a strange world where people are accustomed to horror and have even become somewhat relaxed about it. Yes, there are demons, and that's very bad, but it's not here in the sticks — it's all somewhere out there in the big cities, it doesn't concern us. And you don't have to look far for metaphors. The demons are already here, and we're still worrying about nonsense.

Following in the footsteps of his brothers, who break the rules of their own world, Runya breaks the unspoken rules of horror, according to which children are untouchable, good people are saved, and bad people get what they deserve. The evil that spreads throughout this story — and throughout the world — doesn't care who stands in its way — a pregnant woman, a child, a disabled person, an old man — it just takes its next victim and moves on. I shuddered more than once during this film — and believe me, I'm not easily moved. Overall, I would compare the film to that twisted, beautiful thing that the brothers find in the forest at the beginning of the story, next to half the body of an exorcist cleaner—it's completely incomprehensible how it works, but it looks very cool. A separate plus is for how the clumsy drawing of an autistic teenager comes full circle in the finale.

I'll definitely be waiting for Demian Runya's next film. Unless the evil that the director warns us about in vain swallows this world first...

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (71.5 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by author Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodriguez)

Info Subtitles