Review of the film “Taken by Evil” by Demian Runya

Demian Runya’s film “Possessed by Evil” (Cuando acecha la maldad) is in theaters. Having looked at it, Mikhail Trofimenkov, with all my childhood love for Latin America, Borges and Cortazar, I realized that I would never go to Argentina: it was too scary.

The relative scarcity of Hollywood horror at the domestic box office has turned out to have an unexpectedly educational side. Finnish, Belgian, and Mexican horrors appeared on the screen. Now here are the Argentine ones. And not just so-so horrors, but filmed with the support of the Argentine Film Fund, that is, obviously promoting a certain image of the country and state.

This will probably sound cynical and terrible, but the first thing that comes to mind when watching “Possessed by Evil” is the gastronomic formula: “Argentine cuisine is predominantly meat-based.” So I would like to christen Demian Runya’s film not “Tin”, but “Meat”.

A zombie mom eats her baby’s brains and entrails. The possessed girl cuts a huge cleaver into her forehead over and over again. Under the mess of corpses of teachers killed by hellish schoolchildren, a monster rotting alive and dead is barely moving, begging to be killed. I haven’t even retold a twentieth of the on-screen delights yet. There are also goats possessed by the devil, and maddened dogs, and maddened autists going on a rampage.

And it all starts with a sheer trifle. Hearing revolver fire in the surrounding forest at night, the gloomy brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jaime (Demian Salomon) set out the next morning to search. And they find the body of a character unknown to them, neatly cut in half, who had a set of strange gadgets with him. Something like a compass, something like a huge compass, something like, in short, something.

What’s remarkable is the reaction of Argentine farmers to the gruesome discovery. Nobody is hysterical. They just wonder if it was local landowner Ruiz (Louis Cymbrowski) who killed some outsider pepper. Well then, let him lie cut, as he lay. The agrarian question, you know.

This is the first incursion of social reality into the territory of heavy mystical delirium. There will be others.

For example. Having made sure that pure, undiluted evil has invaded their inhabited pampas, the brothers rush to save Pedro’s ex-wife and his children from this very evil. But Pedro is prohibited from coming within miles of her, and desperate calls to run, run, run are drowned out by appeals to law enforcement to remove Pedro from the surrounding area.

One of Pedro’s children is autistic: a character relevant to world cinema. But the Argentines, such wicked people, are turning the politically correct situation against any correctness. It turns out that demons—the “rotten ones,” as they are called—are capable of burrowing into the brains of people with autistic disorders. Only they get confused there, lose orientation, “unravel mental knots” and sometimes take possession of a darkened mind for several months. But when they master it properly, mother, don’t worry. The finale of the film is connected specifically with an autistic character who loves apple ice cream, and is nightmarish in its incomprehensible physiology.

The only point of support in this crazy Argentina is a set of rules for dealing with “rotten” demons. As soon as such a creature appears on the horizon, for some reason all the electricity must be turned off. Okay, let’s assume. Further, under no circumstances should you shoot at them. If you shoot, an ancient curse will consume you. You should also not touch any things that have been stained by the touch of “rotten things.”

At some point, the heroes, besieged by evil, stand on a hill and look into the distance at a certain city. “You see?” – asks one of them. “No,” the other honestly admits. “That’s right, the lights went out there!”

Heck, maybe there was just a rolling blackout or the substation burned down. No, the Argentines know: this ancient evil has visited.