Somewhere in the countryside of Argentina, evil lurks. Specifically, in the dense mythology created for this film by Terrified director Demián Rugna, evil is inside a grotesquely bloated, seemingly dying man, and it’s waiting to be born. Our rather hapless heroes try to put a stop to this and, along the way, make just about every mistake they could make, something that leads to a lot of death and a lot of horror. It honestly does the film a disservice to discuss any of those moments of horror in particular detail, for after a six-year wait, the follow-up to Terrified – one of the best, scariest horrors of the 21st Century – delivers just as many bizarre and taboo moments of shock.
Also like Terrified, the plot can be difficult to follow – character motivations aren’t always made clear – and the mythology seems to have been constructed arbitrarily to allow for whatever is most frightening in the moment. This latter is something that Rugna cheerfully admits is the case in the extras here. There is no real reason for us to accept that evil needs to give birth to itself, nor that it is difficult for demons to possess autistic people, nor that firearms can’t be safely used on demons – it always works in DOOM, so why not?
However, for all that the film is sloppily arbitrary in constructing its plot, in execution it is downright terrifying; besides which, the folklore of demonic possession, or any other kind of monster myth, doesn’t always add up either, and there is something oddly credible about the mythology constructed here. Like the other great horror director working today, Damian McCarthy of Caveat and Oddball, Rugna’s worlds have the authenticity of an unsettling bedtime story or an urban (well, rural) legend. And if, like me, you’re not too well-versed in Argentinian culture, you may find yourself wondering in any case whether the story draws up unfamiliar folklore.
Additionally, if that’s the case you’re in luck here for Second Sight’s disc offers an English-language commentary track by Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodriguez, who contextualises the film in terms of Argentinian history and the fairly limited field of Argentinian horror cinema. The same holds true for the four Spanish-language interviews, which discuss (among many other topics) the contemporary film industry in Argentina. These are: “It Was Always There”, an insightful and comprehensive interview with director Demián Rugna; “It Was Always There” with Pedro’s actor Ezequiel Rodríguez; “We Made a Movie” with Demián Salomón (who plays Jimi) discussing his career and friendship with Rugna, including Terrified; finally, “Stripped to the Bone” features Virginia Garófalo, who plays Sabrina. All of these play out in front of an out-of-focus monster prop from the film, one of the“Rotten” – a brilliantly creepy touch – and each has a cute stinger after the credits with Rugna, basically, goofing off in some way. A tradition of these Second Sight discs is the video essay, and we go back into English for a fine one: “Terror an the Unknown in When Evil Lurks”, a thoughtful, brief, but historically grounded essay by Mike Muncer dissecting exactly how the picture achieves its exceptionally unsettling effects.