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For the first time in its history, a Latin American film won the highest award at the 56th edition of the Sitges Festivalthe most important festival plaza for horror and fantastic films. When evil lurksby Argentinian Demián Rugna, which has since achieved success at festivals in Toronto and Los Angeles, has become a triumph for the specialized distributor Shudder, and had a solid commercial run in our country (where it was seen by 300,659 viewers until the yesterday), will arrive on June 14 on Netflix.
When evil lurks collects the tradition of rural horror, the legend of the “incarnate”, a cinema of exorcisms without crosses or holy water that competes with the best of contemporary horror. A genuine cinema, alien to the pretensions of “elevated horror” and also to the conditions of the platforms. A terror that sinks its roots into our ancestral fears, into the tradition of Horacio Quiroga’s cruel tales, into the depths of a history that is still being written.
Demián Rugna is not a new name for horror. His figure emerged with the success of Terrified (2017) and since then it became a reference for local terror. Terrified – today available on Netflix – was a surprise for the public, a success in its international distribution and an auspicious turn for the career of its director. But Rugna’s career began a long time ago, as an obsessive viewer of 80s horror films, as the creator of promising short films in the 2000s, as a debut feature film in 2007 with The Last Gateway –premiered at the Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre and then direct to DVD-, and later co-directed with Fabián Forte Damn they are! (2011). A career anchored in horror, exploring its diverse contours, making a place for the genre in a cinematography reluctant to that tradition. Terrified changed the scenario: an austere film, a small story, a triumph of magnitude for Rugna. Now, what do you have When evil lurks that has managed to become a sensation in Sitges and has been garnering praise in all the cities in which it premieres?
“When evil lurks is very different from Terrified“, revealed Demián Rugna in dialogue with LA NACIÓN before the film’s premiere. “Terrified It is an urban, contained film, filmed on a low budget in a single location. When evil lurks, on the other hand, breaks with the structure of my previous films: it is set in the countryside, with many outdoor scenes, with greater technical and artistic risk. For me, the intention was always to make a film about exorcisms but without exorcisms, and without religion as a way out.”. The reference to possession is a key that runs through the film, but avoiding not only the religious iconography founded by William Friedkin’s classic, The Exorcist, but also collecting a whole universe of popular myths, oral traditions and national literature. The reference to the cruel tales of Hora Quiroga permeates the definition of the possessed as “the incarnate one,” a suppurating and smelly man who hides the trace of the devil in that sinful disease.
“The idea for the film had several origins,” continues Rugna. First, my move out of the city, to the Brandsen region, then the daily experience of those expanses of countryside, with its ranchitos isolated and the stories that could emerge around helplessness and loneliness. There are also the diseases of these regions, arising from the effect of pesticides. So I began to think about the drama of a very poor family that lives usurping a field, that works for a rancher who exploits them, and in the face of illness they must manage as best they can. It could house a horror story there, in the middle of nowhere, where no one cares about that family until it starts to affect the rest of the inhabitants of the place.”. The story of the film begins with some shots at night, a strange commotion in the countryside, an uncertain investigation for the brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón). The next morning they go out to inspect the field with the dogs and the clues of horror accumulate: a mutilated man, a strange device for healing, the signs of María Elena’s ranch. There, in a secluded area, lies “Ulysses”, the embichadoa true embodiment of what is to come.
Rugna’s proposal is established from the beginning, and that is what has amazed viewers from all over the world. Faced with the whims of the “elevated horror” of the present, a kind of shell of the genre that hides greater pretensions, matters of public agenda and ambitions for prestige, Rugna’s cinema is visceral, a direct and wild terror, a raw look that does not skimp on emotions for the viewer. “I wanted to make a horror film, something genuine, that would give the viewer a journey of sensations that they won’t have with a film of another genre,” confesses the director. “Obviously, the Argentine and Latin American reality passes through me, a fact that is perceived through addressing problems such as poverty, inequality, selfishness, and discrimination. But it is not a film of denunciation”. The film takes thematic risks and distances itself from the ties of political correctness, avoiding the concept of “product” that dominates commercial cinema today and, at the same time, taking on technical and artistic challenges that reveal an enviable freedom. .
“I didn’t want to make an algorithm film, similar to what populates all platforms. I am very happy that a film whose identity is clearly Argentine is in movie theaters around the world, in Europe, in the United States, without attempting to homogenize the language or erase marks of our idiosyncrasy.”, adds the director. The triumph in a festival like Sitges crowns a path that Rugna has been building for more than a decade. “This film gave me the opportunity to be the director I always wanted to be,” he confirms, “especially because of the recognition and because now I can choose what I want to do with sufficient means. I used to do it, but with budgetary and technical restrictions, taking charge of everything. In the movie I shot just before Terrified, You don’t know who you’re talking to (2016), I did all the post-production, the DFX sound, the script, the direction.” Rugna’s artisanal vocation is not new to Argentine horror cinema, a genre that took him the same amount of time as the director of Terrified convince viewers of the importance of support in the theaters.
“We went twenty years without releasing an Argentine horror film in commercial theaters. From someone is watching you (1988) [de Gustavo Cova y Horacio Maldonado]until winter visitor (2008) by Sergio Esquenazi. At that time, the public still filled the theaters to see horror films from Hollywood, sometimes not too good. But with one’s own cinema there are always greater prejudices, greater demands. It is also true that the themes that national cinema addressed, especially since the generation of the 60s and during the New Argentine Cinema of the 90s, are linked to social cinema and auteur cinema, and not so much to genre. The genre needs a bigger budget and when it is done with few resources it is a failure. And a bad genre film exposes you to ridicule”explains the director.
His influences go back to his adolescence, to cinema slasher from the 80s –John Carpenter, Sam Raimi-, to the Italians of the giallo such as Argento, Bava or Fulci – whose brands can be traced in When evil lurks-, but also to the films of Tarantino, Scorsese and especially the Englishman Clive Barker, director of hellraiser (1987). “Barker is a writer and his books are very original for the genre, he has always motivated me to try to find a way around that imagery. Today I don’t watch too much contemporary horror, I watch all types of cinema. In my childhood and adolescence I did see all the horror movies there were, I was a big fan. But it always seemed to me to be a love-hate relationship, as it is an entertainment and commercial cinema and is often dictated by those searches, betraying its transgressive spirit.”
There were several reasons that stimulated the release of Argentine horror films in recent years, the same ones that created their own audience that today explains Rugna’s triumph in Sitges. “Firstly, the support of Incaa, which for a long time considered horror as a marginal, almost pornographic cinema. Then, film festivals – not only Sitges, but also the local Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre – that invite and program these films, opening a commercial vein that did not exist before. The advancement of technology has allowed better quality films to be made with fewer resources. All of this contributed to forming an audience that goes to the movies, recommends the movies, and is convinced every day that we can also make good horror movies. The award in Sitges is proof of that, it is good news for our cinema, for our industry. And that’s why what moved me the most was the joy I felt coming from Argentina. “That celebration gave me one of the most beautiful sensations in my life as a filmmaker.”
