After the Argentinian director terrified with ‘Aterrados’ in the 2018 edition Demian Rugna He returned to the Sitges festival with something even more terrifying, if possible. ‘When evil is hidden’ (Official Fantasy Competition) will be highly interpreted for several moments that are impossible to forget, even if one strives to sleep peacefully again in this life. Just when Sitges veterans think they’ve seen it all, Rugna arrives to give them an unexpected bite.
“I’m tired of horror movies designed to sell well,” Rugna explains of his audacious offering, which arrives in Sitges tomorrow after traumatizing the public in Toronto and Fantastic Fest in Texas. “I never make products. When I write a movie, anything can happen. And this can happen to any character. “This gives me the opportunity to play with the audience more, so they’re not ready to take what they’re going to get.”
‘Embichados’
At the beginning of ‘When Evil Stalks’ the Pedro brothers (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomón, Rugna’s favorite player) discover a person split in half in the middle of the field. If you think this is scary, wait until you see what people possessed by demonic entities (or “drunk” in popular slang) look like, or what can happen if you try to put an end to evil by conventional means.
Rugna, a student of horror cinema, is greatly inspired by the film’s “brutality, its viscerality”. Lucio FulciBut this time, more importantly, it became an epic ‘Hellish possession’ or Na Hong-Jin’s Korean work ‘The Stranger’, which influenced him “to achieve a rural narrative and an interesting structure”.
This rural setting (or “the ass of the world” as the protagonists call it) contrasts with Rugna’s previous works, which focus more on nightmares of urban landscapes. “After working on ‘Aterrados’ and its disappointing ‘remake’, I was tired of writing stories about two or three city locations. I needed to make a ‘road movie’ of sorts. By going on the road, myself, for what I had done.”
James Cameron already saw this
‘Bad Stalks’ started to become a reality here at this festival. “We wanted to look for co-productions and the first thing that came to mind was Sitges FanPitch. [concurso de presentación de proyectos de largometrajes y series]. We won one of the awards, which made it easier for us to develop the film.” The main investor, the streaming platform Shudder, eventually brought the result to movie theaters in the United States: more than six hundred, to be more precise. A complete success for a small film in Spanish. “Premiere in our own country “For us coming from Argentina, where it’s hard to do, it’s a privilege to be in so many American movies.”
Rugna says James Cameron personally went to see the film at a preview screening in Santa Monica, California, last Thursday and “paid for his ticket.” “Also, he stayed through the Q&A period…exactly what I was hoping he wouldn’t do so he wouldn’t piss me off.”