When Evil Lurks (2023) and Terrified (2017) are two horror films that remind you that horror is supposed to hurt, physically, emotionally, maybe even spiritually if you’ve been particularly naughty. These two Argentine horror films don't just attempt to unsettle, they attempt to mug you in your own nightmares.
They are two films that don’t care about your trauma metaphors unless your trauma is being physically ripped in half by some demonic hellspawn. Which, to be fair, is valid.
Terrified (2017): Paranormal Chaos With No Safety Net
If you haven’t seen Demián Rugna’s Terrified (original title: Aterrados), I will tell you that this is a film that says, “What if we just didn’t explain any of this, and also made it horrifying?”
The structure? Disjointed. The logic? Optional. The horror? Relentless.
The plot sort of exists. We have some weird happenings in a Buenos Aires neighborhood, and a boy dies and promptly comes back. Then a neighbor hears voices from the drain. But this isn’t a narrative so much as it is a collage of terror. And it works. God help us, it works.
Terrified abandons the traditional horror rulebook with gleeful malevolence. You know the ones, and it throws that book into a wood chipper and then feeds the wood chipper to a ghost.
Characters you expect to live die, and safety is an illusion. There is no heroic third act confrontation, just a slow, sanity-eroding realization that the world is far more broken and haunted than anyone signed up for.
It feels like watching an Argentinian Poltergeist made by David Lynch after a few too many drinks. It makes you try to make sense of a nightmare, before realizing, to your horror, that logic has packed its bags and left you alone with the monsters.
Rugna is simply a master of doing a lot with little. The camera work is deceptively simple. The scares aren’t loud, but they’re mercilessly timed. The music is minimalist, and the lighting doesn’t rely on cliches but goes full drab realism, which somehow makes the horror more grotesquely believable.
And the acting? Grounded. Naturalistic. These are not sexy CW actors pretending to be terrified. These are adults who look like they’ve had jobs, mortgages, and divorces, now dealing with actual supernatural insanity. That realism is the key to the film’s existential dread, and it all hits hard, very hard.
[Terrified on IMDB] [Where to Watch and Stream Terrified]
When Evil Lurks (2023): The Apocalypse Isn’t Coming, It’s Already in Your Barn
Now onto When Evil Lurks, also directed by Demián Rugna. If Terrified was a haunted house on meth, When Evil Lurks is an exorcism film that got tired of the church’s shit and decided to start the apocalypse by itself.
There’s a plot here, technically. Two brothers in rural Argentina discover a “rotten”, a man possessed by evil to such a degree that he’s basically a biohazard. Instead of calling a priest (because the priests are, understandably, not answering their phones anymore), they try to handle it themselves. Bad move. Terrible move. Catastrophically idiotic move.
And from there, it only gets worse.
Where most exorcism films show a flicker of hope, such as the possibility of redemption, salvation, or at least some containment, When Evil Lurks is brutally, apocalyptically nihilistic. Once someone is “rotten,” they’re not coming back. Kill them the wrong way, and you spread the infection. Try to help? You’re already dead. Try to escape? Cute.
The horror in the film isn’t just that evil exists, it’s that it’s already won. The demonic force in this film doesn’t play by the usual supernatural rules. Holy water? Worthless. Faith? LOL. Science? Good luck. What’s left is a growing, choking sense of helplessness as everything collapses into chaos and despair.
When Evil Lurks is not a fun movie. And that’s what makes it brilliant. Rugna takes the skin-crawling tension of Terrified and gives it flesh, blood, and entrails. And yes, I mean that literally.
It's also to its merit an incredibly grounded horror film. This isn’t set in some ancient castle or remote monastery. It’s small towns, dusty roads, broken families. It feels like this could happen down the street. And once again, the acting sells it, it's not melodramatic but weary, desperate, and devastatingly human.
And even if you're the kind of horror fan that needs the film to have a metaphor (and you probably are), you’ll be pleased to know that When Evil Lurks could be read as an allegory for systemic rot, such as how ignoring problems only makes them spread, how institutions fail us, how violence begets more violence.
But the film doesn’t sit you down and spoon-feed you that message with soft lighting and a sad violin. It hurls it at your face while screaming. The commentary is there, but it’s embedded in the muscle and bone of the story. It’s not symbolic horror, it’s symbolic and literal horror, covered in gore, screaming for help, and then silenced forever.
[When Evil Lurks on IMDB] [Where to Watch and Stream When Evil Lurks]
Two Of My Favorite Horror Films Of Modern Times
So why do I recommend Terrified and When Evil Lurks all the time when someone asks me to recommend them some horror films? It's because not only are they both brilliant horror films, but also because they both tap into deep, instinctual human fears
These aren’t movies built around third-act twists or elevated grief metaphors like so much of todays horror. They’re built around fear, all of it raw, immediate, and unfiltered. They don’t promise safety. They don’t offer much hope. And they certainly don’t care if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable with it all.
These films remind me that horror doesn’t need to be pretty, it needs to be powerful. Rugna is doing what American horror used to do before the market got saturated with IPs and spin-offs. He’s creating genuinely new nightmares, and in my opinion, these films are not just entries in the genre, they’re revolutions. Brutal, bloody, beautiful revolutions.
They won’t comfort you. They won’t even pretend to. But they will remind you what horror is capable of when it stops playing nice. So go on, watch them, and trust nothing. Especially not that sound in the wall.
And if you dislike them, you're dead to me.
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