Writing about ‘WHEN EVIL LURKS’ for Reverse Shot's Halloween series

I wrote here about this beautiful but upsetting film…

“Amongst many wrenching and lurid sequences in When Evil Lurks, the one that stays with me most vividly is the first encounter with the central “rotten,” Uriel—named for the biblical archangel who figures in Haydn’s Creation and prominently in Gnostic and folk Catholic tradition as one who collaborates with demons. The protagonists, Pedro (played by the striking, gaunt Ezequiel Rodriguez) and his brother Jaime, are led matter-of-factly into Uriel’s dank, squalid grief hole of a bedroom. The apparition on the bed is barely human, resembling someone from an exploitative TLC documentary about monstrously obese people crossed with someone from another exploitative TLC documentary about terrifying dermatological conditions. Uriel is carrying a demon, so is on his way to being possessed in the manner of Regan from The Exorcist, but by contrast to Regan he is merely a stricken carrier, passive and immovable, wallowing in his own abjection and suppuration. By the end of the scene, the helplessness of his condition has become more overwhelming than the threat he poses or the repulsive nature of his appearance.