When Evil Lurks (2 Stars)

This is the ninth film in the Stuttgart White Nights Festival.

"When Evil Lurks" is a film made in Argentina by the director Demian Rugna. It always annoys me when people say they don't like horror films. There's no consistent style. What they usually mean is that they don't like films with blood and gore. This is the sort of film that they point at.

The film starts with two brothers finding a man sawn in half. He was a "Cleaner" who'd been sent to execute a "Rotten". These expressions are thrown at us as if we're supposed to know what they mean. The Rotten is a man with a rotting body who's being kept by his mother on a neighbouring farm. He begs to be killed, but if he's not killed in the correct ritual, his disease will spread to someone else. So it's not just an illness, it's a type of demon possession?

The brothers put the Rotten in their truck and dump him by the roadside 200 miles away. But when they return home evil is spreading. People are brutally killing one another. The Rotten has somehow found his way back to the village. He's being protected by dead children who sit obediently in a classroom.

If you think that all makes no sense, you're right. The film is a mess. It's blood and gore for the sake of it.

I watched a film by the same director six years ago. I can't remember "Terrified", even after reading my blog post. I ended my post with the words that it didn't make sense. "When Evil Lurks" doesn't make sense either, and I'll probably forget it as well.