This movie was overhyped as being the scariest movie of the year and frankly, I wasn't scared at all.

The idea behind the movie was a completely fresh take and this, I enjoyed. However, being that it was a low budget film I felt they couldn't portray that idea well enough. The dialogue was incredibly frustrating and intentionally created tense moments by the characters constantly in panic and arguing with each other. This creates tension in the viewers, although not executed well at all.

Towards the end of the movie, the writing takes a massive cliff dive as characters make dumbfoundedly stupid decisions. This immediately pulled me out of whatever world this movie was trying to immerse you in, as I say out loud "Well that was dumb". [spoiler] Near the end, two characters have a chance to stop this evil but instead, the guy decides to do what he knows he shouldn't which is leave to another room to grab an axe, which left the only person who could have stopped everything in harms way. This scene was just so incredibly stupid. Then, the end is just that he has to live with his mistakes? [/spoiler]

The end was just dull to me. The movie has a lot of shock factor, which it does well. Though overall, I just felt as though it wasn't that special.

I can see what When Evil Lurks is trying to achieve. Its an alternate take on reality, a horror infused, supernatural world, where demonic possession is an accepted occurrence.

Its done convincingly, with an everyday vibe, where a possession event is akin to a serious crime or perhaps, a natural disaster. The problem is, the treatment is deeply, violently disturbing, to the point where you start to ask if this is, in fact, adding value as a creative work?

Its a subjective point but I found this one too brutal and shocking, for me to really say I found it compelling. I think too, a more subtle approach could have been taken, with better results in terms of watch-ability.

In summary, makes the outlandishly otherworldly everyday, in a convincing manner but the delivery is on the heavy handed side of horror, to say the least.