Short episode: The Kirlian Frequency: The Masters of the Night

Director: Cristian Ponce

First aired: 2017

Contains spoilers

And this will necessarily contain spoilers as this episode of the Argentinean animation played with genre tropes effectively but did broadcast its twist from early into its ten-minute running time.

The series itself is set in the city of Kirlian and centres on a radio station and the late-night host. In this case the main character of the story is ringing into the station (as she finds the number as an emergency contact – and is told the cops don’t work at night in Kirlian). Each episode is a short horror type story but isn’t that horrific, rather it captures a really nice sense of the uncanny – helped by the stylised animation.

the bikers

The narrator of this tale was travelling to a hospital, where a friend she had argued with had been taken after crashing whilst travelling home alone. A motorcycle passes by her and the pillion passenger looks directly at her with glowing green eyes. Her car breaks down a few kilometres later (in Kirlian) and a good Samaritan calls a friend who has a garage and they take her downtown to get a room for the night.

the Lost Boys

Passing by a plaza she sees the guys from the motorcycle with friends, who shout towards her – which she ignores. She does make a judgement about them sleeping all day, partying at night and thinking they’ll never die (the source of this reference, obviously, the Lost Boys). In her room she washes her clothes but a neighbour starts releasing a smoke – to keep away the bugs, he says, the bloodsuckers. Without him knowing she puts out the source of the smoke.

encounter

She is awoken with the man arguing with others – things go silent and she goes to his room, the door ajar, clearly blood on the floor, but before she enters she is stopped by one of the bikers, who asks what she is doing in Kirlian – she notices that his feet do not touch the floor. Outside the good Samaritan appears, holding a stake, but is grabbed.

mosquito form

The woman, having spoken to the radio host and then discovering that her friend has died in hospital, comes to a conclusion and goes to the plaza, saying they should let the Samaritan go and take her instead. She explains that she doesn’t want to die and knows they are vampires and can make her one of them. And the twist, they are not vampires and will not live forever – they are mosquitoes in human form (so, a kind of vampire then, we’ve covered a few films that merge vampires with human shaped mosquitoes). Will she get to leave Kirlian again?

Salem's Lot

That, of course, is the question and I won’t spoil that but the episode itself is wonderfully off-kilter, the dialogue we hear is from the woman speaking to the radio host, but conversation within the story makes use of subtitles. I rather liked the whole series and this episode was wonderfully referential and enjoyable. I also need to mention a later episode in the season, The King of Christmas, where the radio host tries to make it Christmas Day in spring (due to a predicted disaster threatening to prevent the real Christmas). A caller repeatedly suggests various scenarios are occurring that are clearly from Stephen King and so, at one point, mentions a child next door dying but now floating at his brother’s window, ala Salem’s Lot.

The imdb page for the Masters of the Night episode is here.