'When Evil Lurks' disturbing ending, explained
When Evil Lurks is such an impressively grim movie that it's bound to stick in your head for a while after the end credits have rolled. But along with some of the truly disturbing and shocking moments are the questions left at the end.
What exactly happens in that school? Where does the evil spirit end up? And what does it mean for the main characters? We've sifted through the blood and gore to try and get to the answers.
What is When Evil Lurks about?
Set in an apocalyptic Argentina, Demián Rugna's When Evil Lurks follows brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón), who discover their neighbour's son has been possessed by a demonic force. In this world, people who have been possessed need to be handled by professional cleaners, as simply killing the person will only cause the evil to spread into the minds of those nearby. The bad news? The local politicians don't seem too keen to help out, so the brothers have to take matters into their own hands.
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Cue everything going horribly wrong, and the brothers inadvertently wreaking a trail of destruction among their own families as they try and flee the entity they've provoked.
What happens at the end?
When Evil Lurks isn't your typical zombie movie. It's more complex than that. People who are possessed need to have the entity inside them excised in a certain manner — simply shooting them in the head isn't going to cut it. All of this leads Pedro and his family to a confrontation in a Children of the Corn-style school filled with silent, creepy kids, all of whom are being manipulated by the demon to help protect it from destruction.
Long story short? The monster wins. Despite the best efforts of Pedro and co., they fail to destroy the evil and a new demon is released into the world.
Has Pedro's son become possessed?
Unfortunately for Pedro, his misery doesn't end there. In a final epilogue sequence, we see him making apple ice cream for his autistic son, Jair (Emilio Vodanovich), and there's a glint of hope that he's been able to return to some form of normality after all he's been through. It doesn't last, though. In one of the most disgusting scenes of the entire movie — which is saying something — the son coughs up a massive clump of hair, followed by the necklace his grandmother was wearing. His eyes then flick, ever so briefly, over to Pedro's.
Pedro appears shocked by this, but the writing was on the wall. The retired preacher (Silvina Sabater) called it when she saw Jair earlier in the film.
"A demon got into his head and is trapped," she says. "I saw this in autistic people. They invade their bodies but can't figure out their minds. They can stay lost in that limbo for long without untying the knot, and then they possess them."
The implication at the end of the film is that the demon has untied the knot. Jair is now possessed, and his first demon-infected act was to eat his own grandmother.
How to watch: When Evil Lurks is now streaming on Shudder.
