WHEN EVIL LURKS/SPEAK NO EVIL (REVIEWS/NO SPOILERS!)

 WHEN EVIL LURKS (2023) and SPEAK NO EVIL (2022) are two critically-lauded films that traffic in two very different kinds of horror, and yet are remarkably similar in their effect. 

WHEN EVIL LURKS has been labelled a "proper" horror film, and it is, in terms of showing legitimately horrible things. In a world where demonic possession has apparently become commonplace, two brothers discover a bloated, possessed person being hidden near their farm. 

Taking matters into their own hands, they move the demon outside the town limits and promptly lose it somewhere along the road. Deciding that it doesn't matter that they didn't follow known protocols, they head back home. However, it soon becomes apparent that the rules exist for a reason, and their ineffectiveness has unleashed a terrible force. 

SPEAK NO EVIL is also a horror film, but in a completely different way. For starters, the film opens with a shot of a car driving along a night road, the soundtrack dissonant and extremely ominous: something bad and wrong is going on, we just don't know what yet. But, then we cut to a sunny villa in Italy, and everything's fine. 

A couple are on holiday there with their pre-teen daughter, and they meet another couple with a younger son. Despite being from different cultures and countries (Danish and Dutch, respectively), they all hit it off. Cut to a few months later and the Dutch couple invite the Danish family to spend a long weekend with them. As friends of the Danish couple note, "What's the worst that could happen?" 

A lot of very awful things, it turns out. Of the two films, SPEAK NO EVIL is certainly the one that's stayed with me, although I have no desire to ever watch it again.

Whereas WHEN EVIL LURKS examines how a person's lack of care to attention can have drastic, horrific consequences, SPEAK NO EVIL looks at how a person's attempts to pay too much attention to how they should behave can itself lead to terrible consequences. 

Although one features actual Satanic demons resurrecting corpses and murdering people, and the other has normal people in a very real world setting, both manage to capture very specific moods and atmospheres. 

Most modern horror is content to rely on jump scares, spooky orchestral music, dark things lurking in shadows, that sort of thing. It's weirdly safe, in a way, because this is the language of horror and so we know that it can't actually last. The shadowy form will likely be defeated or at least dispelled until a sequel, that jump scare is a cheap trick, the music is immersive but only up to a point. Horror films want to scare you but they rarely want to horrify you.

WHEN EVIL LURKS conjures an unrelenting sense of dread, as one lazy mistake snowballs into worse and worse situations. More demons appear, more people die, and it's quickly established that no one is safe. The main characters realise their mistake and try to fix it, but this only makes things worse - the whole 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' deal, in a nutshell.

SPEAK NO EVIL becomes deeply, deeply uncomfortable a short way into the movie. When the Dutch husband offers the vegetarian Danish wife a chunk of roast boar, insisting she try it, is this a result of the Dutchman genuinely forgetting she's vegetarian? Is he legitimately excited for his guests to try a local delicacy? Or is he pushing his desired behaviour onto them? Note that the Danish wife doesn't complain or even remind him she's vegetarian. 

This continues on, in ways that are remarkably logical. If you're a guest in someone's house, how much of their behaviour do you tolerate? How willing are you to accept that the way they act isn't actually reasonable? Or do you keep making excuses for them: oh, they forgot to do this because they're drunk, or they maybe did mention this but I wasn't paying proper attention, etc. 

Even though SPEAK NO EVIL reaches one very clear point in the film where things could have ended, the choice to undo this particular action makes sense. No necessarily in a "of course I would do that" way but more of a "I understand why they did that" way. Because these are normal people caught in a normal, if uncomfortable, situation.

If WHEN EVIL LURKS suffers from anything, it's that its horror plateaus early and doesn't technically escalate - we see some terrible things happen to people that usually escape this kind of thing, but then it keeps happening to them. Yet, it's a testament to the film that while the horror may level off the sense of dread does not. We know things are going to keep getting worse, we just don't know how exactly. All we know is that it's almost certainly pointless for anyone to keep trying to stop the evil; it's refreshing to see a fatalistic horror movie.

SPEAK NO EVIL does make a pivot from its initial discomfort to something worse in a way that initially felt a little disappointing. "Oh, so that's the reason," you're lead to believe. But then, almost as quickly, it throws new info at you that immediately makes things genuinely terrifying, and yet still well within the realms of reality. 

It may not get supernatural, but it presents a type of evil that is as unescapable as that shown in WHEN EVIL LURKS. And just as with that film, it's an evil you have to invite in - even if you don't realise you're doing it.