co-writer/director of WHEN EVIL LURKS
At the risk of being premature in my assessment, I think Demián Rugna is the real deal. His Terrified from 2017 was confident and brilliant: a strange, alchemical product of the unimaginable and the familiar; a "fun" extreme gore/horror exercise that crossed the line so often it rewrote it. Now, six years later, here's Rugna's follow-up: When Evil Lurks, which is more–and amplified–innovative obscenity. The large gap between Terrified and When Evil Lurks and the failure of announced projects to materialize have, if anything, only sharpened the cruelty of his images and the atrocity of his ideas. I wondered if Terrified was an anomaly, given that it seemed to come from nowhere, fully formed with its payload of "what the fuck?" lawlessness, but When Evil Lurks confirms the arrival of a major talent.
I spoke to Mr. Rugna via Zoom on the eve of his new film's U.S. theatrical release. (Shudder will begin streaming it on October 27.) He is soft-spoken, thoughtful, and seized occasionally by inspiration, causing him to grip the sides of his head. In his mannerisms and delivery, he reminded me a lot of Charlie Kaufman. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to feel like I felt during Jaws while I was watching When Evil Lurks, either. The world is full of surprises. I began by asking him–because I thought he might know–where evil comes from:
DEMIÁN RUGNA: I guess I've been playing with the madness, with the craziness, with the idea that everyone has a demon on one side and an angel on the other side, and what happens when that angel disappears. What happens when all you have is the demon to tell you what you need, what you must do. I took that concept, and then I tried to make an exorcist movie without religion. That's the puzzle. I've been trying to find a way to tell a story in which the main character already has his own metaphorical demons he's trying to run away from. Maybe it's his past, you know, his decisions–the choices he made or even didn't make, but he is haunted, you know? He already has his own demons, [the] demon is already chasing him. I'm not answering your question… Where does evil come from? I think it doesn't come from somewhere, that it is always already here. Okay, but what happens… What happens when the angel that provides balance disappears? That's the idea.
FILM FREAK CENTRAL: Are you saying something about Argentina? Is "the rotten" a direct metaphor for some kind of social decay?
In Argentina, we have a serious social problem, and I guess it could serve as sort of a metaphor for our situation, but whatever I make will reflect the place where I made it–and me, the person who made it. The social struggle that we have is printed on the movie. The poor people who live in poverty in our country, in the interior of our country, who work in fields, the plantations… The pesticides they're forced to use are killing them. There are children with cancer and nobody takes care of them. Nobody cares because they're poor. And that sorrow and outrage is imprinted on the movie, I think. In the film, you see how the well-off, the landowners, blame the poor people for bringing the Devil to them. They think to themselves, Poverty brings me the bad things in this society, and not, I am responsible for, and profit from, the poor. They want to get rid of them, when they could easily just take care of their needs. This is Argentina, but it's also the world, yes? The demons are here and they have always been here. That struggle is printed on us.
Your films remind me of some of the great horror movies of the American '70s, films in which the themes could be reduced, in some cases, to "we've failed our children" and "we can't protect them."
Yes, when I write a horror movie, I'm really not corny about it. I mean, I'm not a guy who–what's the term for it? Pulls my punches? I'm very serious when I make horror, and I want to be sure that when I'm writing, anything could happen. If I get the chance, if the producers and the studio give me the freedom to really, really be myself, if they allow me to write what is in my heart, then everyone in my movie is in danger. It doesn't matter if they're children, women–maybe especially if they're children and women they're in danger, because that reflects our society, doesn't it? Or at least it reflects our fears for the safety of our families. That is what horror is, what evil is: when you can't protect the people you love and [who] are the most vulnerable and, um, they can't protect you, either. And I'm a horror fan–a big horror fan. And if you give me the chance, I will go deeper. When I write, I'm like God, so I decide who lives and who doesn't live, and if I write about a highway to Hell, this path to Hell, then to honour that I need to be very serious about not being sentimental about my characters. I take it as a responsibility. I take it seriously. I'm not joking with these stories.
What is the relationship between horror and humour?
I have a very black sense of humour, and for me, from my point of view, both humour and horror need a rhythm. When you are you are trying to make a joke, the punchline needs to surprise the audience. For humour to work, you need pace and, and timing. The structure of the joke is the same as horror. You need the surprise, but you need to build to it. You need to earn it. You need to have the same rhythm and you need a certain instinct to know when it's right. In order to make horror, it's the same. If you can get ahead of the punchline, if you notice where I will scare you and how I am trying to scare you, the scare doesn't work. I made a black comedy before Terrified, just before Terrified, and I realized that I was just transferring my sense of humour from black comedies to horror scenarios. If you could count it out when you're watching my movie, you'll see that the things happening to them are like the build to a big joke: you plant the seed and then you come back later at the right time to harvest the crop. I love to see an audience scared, the screaming is like laughter when a joke you've set up carefully [is] built and built and timed out and then it lands. That's everything. That's the idea.
"I wrote this movie before the pandemic, but what I felt a lot during the pandemic is just how much we all lack faith. We lack faith in God, of course, but also in scientists, in community. Do we have faith in strangers to care for us? Who are the caretakers? I began to feel this real loss of faith."
Can you expand on "rhythm" and "instinct"?
I don't have a template. I don't have any idea where I'm going when I write. More than making decisions, I need to feel my way through it… When I wrote this, I realized I'm going too fast to start, with too much violence during the first half of the movie. Not according to a template of how to write a script, but because it just felt heavy. But I felt like it was important, you know, to make sure the audience knew what the stakes were and how serious I was that you wouldn't feel comfortable or familiar. So then a lot of things happen in the first half and that maybe is okay, but can I keep [up] the pace of surprises? [H]ow do I keep the rhythm, you now, how do I keep the audience nodding their heads? It was a risk. I knew it was a risk, because when you choose to start high and you decide to go slow, I don't know, I think you risk losing everybody. But that was my gut. I split the movie into parts with extreme violence and rhythm at the beginning, and then I downshifted into something more creepy. I established what could happen, and now I'm trying to, to lull you so that you might be more vulnerable for when I snatch you. I'm trying to introduce you to a world that's bigger than these horrible events. I wanted to open it up. I don't know if it's resolved, if I was successful and if the balance is right, but I made a bet. I made a bet that we had a climax that worked and that the ending should be more quiet, because otherwise it would lack balance, structure. Even if I'm wrong, I knew I could only make it with my instinct. I'm not articulate about my work, I think, because I don't work in order and consciously… I'm just trying to be honest with myself, and if I can be that, then I'm honest with my audience, too. I'm not trying to be cruel, I think we need real horror movies. If there is anything that is ultimately my signature, it's that I believe we need to show real horror in movies to express the real horror of living. We must know horror without experiencing real consequences. We must build empathy so we can survive.
Why did you want to do a possession movie without religion?
I didn't want to take the easy way–to do the scenes we've seen already. You make an exorcist movie and then you have all the stuff, the ritual, and then you have the salvation or the cure with the religion. And, no, I don't want that.
Early on, you have a character in your film say, "The Church is dead."
Yes, in this film there is no religion. There's no sign of religious stereotype, cliché, formula. Those things are too comforting. I said, "Okay, if I make a possession movie, what does that look like without an exorcist?" I don't need it! What happens if the demons are inside the body, but there's no priest, there's no church–if we start there, then what's next? Who takes care of this person who is possessed? That's enough religion for anyone: a caretaker who doesn't abandon you when you decay. I want you to focus on that, and for you to focus on that, I need to kill religion and the church, to kill faith. That lack of faith is, for me, essential in this movie, because it's almost… I mean, I wrote this movie before the pandemic, but what I felt a lot during the pandemic is just how much we all lack faith. We lack faith in God, of course, but also in scientists, in community. Do we have faith in strangers to care for us? Who are the caretakers? I began to feel this real loss of faith.
The seventh rule in your demonology is to not be afraid. Is that possible?
Everyone forgets the seventh rule. Everyone is always afraid. You have to not be afraid to die. You have to not be afraid of losing something, because if you're afraid for something, the evil will know and it's going to do exactly what you don't want him to do. It's like the rules against naming it: You can speak evil into the world. Only the demon hunter, Mithra, only she's not afraid. But she's vulnerable, because she is surrounded by people who are afraid.
You have a rule, too, against electric lights… Why? Is there a connection with industrialization in your rules? With cities?
I tried to construct rules that would make their work impossible. I mean, we need electric light if we are fighting something that lives in the dark. There's a warning about shadows that move on their own, but how do we even test that if there is no steady light source? How do you chase something through abandoned houses and the woods without a light you can carry? The ban against guns… We already don't have religion to save us, but it's almost the only thing we have to comfort us. Things go bad because they break the rules–but I don't know if you can follow them, because the enemy cheats. Sometimes I wondered if the demon travelled through the electricity. Maybe banning electric light is just a way to plant that into the mind of the audience. But I don't know the answer, and I don't think it's helpful to know if the evil travels through electricity, or flies, or digs… You just know that it spreads. That's not uncertainty, that's certainty.
