After finding a scene of carnage and following its trail to a home where a demon-infected man lays on the precipice of death, a pair of brothers haltingly attempt to expel, escape, and ultimately confront an infectious evil in Demian Rugna's "When Evil Lurks", an Argentinian horror movie that combines foreboding atmosphere and unflinching gore to become one of the best horror movies of the year. Of course, it also helps greatly (for this reviewer at least) that the movie is another entry into the "fuck them kids" canon, as ready to subject its younger characters to the horror and danger surrounding them as it is the adults whose understanding of the basic phenomena they're confronted with only seems to exacerbate the suffering they must eventually endure. This is a bleak, bloody movie that -- like this year's "Evil Dead Rise", "Saw X" and "Talk to Me" -- actually deserves the kind of praise it's been getting, not least because of the great leading performances by Ezequiel Rodriguez and Demian Salomon as the protagonist brothers whose psychological vulnerabilities are abused by their demonic foe in a way that makes David Gordon Green's "The Exorcist: Believer" look even more puny by comparison. An excellent movie that all horror fans should check out.
