The Kirlian Frequency: Terror in the Towns of Buenos Aires Province

The city of Buenos Aires is the nerve center of the Argentine Nation. It is the epicenter of state power and a hub for major economic capitals. The port behemoth, the media kraken, its influence is inescapable. One doesn’t need to search very hard to find mystery in the city. It’s the very title of one of Mujica Laínez’s most famous books. When night falls, its foundations are made of mystery, and the ghosts collected since its founding roam every lonely corner of its ancient theaters, its abandoned ships, its immense buildings, and the spiderweb-like wiring of its neighborhoods. Borges could sleep in any city in the world but always dreamed of Buenos Aires. However, the monopoly on the enigmatic does not belong solely to the capital.

The province of Buenos Aires is also mysterious, but one must step aside from the noise, the blinding light of the skies, the claustrophobic sidewalks, and the human seas that ebb and flow from its public transport. Because to find that magical, indescribable, tangible, and hypnotic thing that remains hidden, you have to get into a car and dive into the world of the roads.

I come from a family of truck drivers and long-distance chauffeurs, and I have always felt a fascination with the road as a liminal space where anything is possible. The cabin of a bus in the dark that disappears into the perpetual blackness of the road and beyond—where does the bus end and where does the cold cement begin, along with my father, the stars, the other passengers, and the things that move in the silence among the shadowy grasslands? And when the sun rises and reveals the landscape of fields and crops with their silos and barns, the liminality remains, in those worlds confined between fences and horizon.

To find that magical, indescribable, tangible, and hypnotic thing that remains hidden, you have to get into a car and dive into the world of the roads.

The kilometers roll by, enormous billboards come and go, both modern and those that have long since become anachronistic, toll booths, factories, quarries, abandoned gas stations where a family built a home in a place that only exists in the meantime. Small grills that inhabit a constant present. An obvious liminality, like in any environment that connects two points, but with a life in constant development that at the same time seems frozen on the margins of history and progress.

Welcome to Ingeniero Kirlian

In the province of Buenos Aires, there are over 1,000 towns across the 135 municipalities that make it up. It’s an imprecise number, of course, because new settlements are continually being added, but one could easily think that among so many lost towns in the nooks of the interprovincial roads, there are places that emerge from nowhere.

There’s a little town that doesn’t appear on any maps, spoken of in hushed tones. It’s an urban myth, some kind of legend lost in the cracks of reality. A place where no one goes. A place from which no one returns.

Ingeniero Kirlian is the epicenter of the mystery created by director, illustrator, and fervent X Files podcaster Cristian Ponce for his series “The Kirlian Frequency.” A town like any other: with its small community that knows each other by name, its historic businesses passed down through generations, its old gossips in charge of the neighborhood meetings, its kids playing soccer in streets where cars barely pass… and its mysteries. Mysteries that wish to remain so. But the intrusion of an element threatens to disturb this strange calm. A stranger, of course. A surveyor obsessed with this hidden town, with rumors of a place where impossible things happen. A place that is used to its customs involving something that, more than magical and wonderful, enters the realm of the terrifying and abominable.

There’s a little town that doesn’t appear on any maps, spoken of in hushed tones. It’s an urban myth, some kind of legend lost in the cracks of reality. A place where no one goes. A place from which no one returns.

But Kirlian has a voice and a pair of fiery eyes. In a small local radio station, 96.6, a cadaverous host with a sardonic and acerbic sense of humor begins his show with a message for his audience: there’s a new visitor in town. And they don’t like strangers.

The series

This is the context of the animated series that Ponce created in 2017, produced by Tangram Cine, which has been available on YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, and is currently on Flixxo and Flow. The town becomes the setting for an anthology that pays homage to series that blend horror, fantasy, and science fiction like “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits.”

“Homage” is a term that has been quite battered, a way to evoke a feeling lost in time through filters, songs, and themes, all to generate a highly addictive substance in these times: nostalgia. Nostalgia that often acts as a scam to the viewer, a guaranteed satisfaction device that feeds on prefabricated formulas until they wear thin. We’ve seen it everywhere: in Vaporwave and City Pop (all the Melanco-Pop music) on the Internet, in the Stranger Things craze and the return of the slasher to horror cinema, in the 8-bit and Pixel Art that we’ve seen for years in the indie gaming scene.

But Kirlian doesn’t play with melancholy; it’s a love letter to a past time that always feels honest, heartfelt, and most importantly: personal. In an era where everything follows a winning formula to the point of exhaustion, it’s refreshing to see a work guided by the obsessions and tastes of its creator as its only compass.

Kirlian is a playground, not just for Ponce, but also for writer Hernán Bengoa and musician Marcelo Cataldo, and in that triad lies the creative power that sustains a changing and constantly evolving work.

Let’s take Chapter 4: The King of Christmas, for example, where not only is Elvio Gandolfo’s dossier on Stephen King in the magazine El Péndulo (a foundational pillar of science fiction in Argentina) taken as a strong point, along with a vivid recounting of his work that attacks the city through a Lovecraftian entity, but it’s also done in a childlike drawing style, funny and sweetly creepy. Obviously, accompanied by lovely little tunes worthy of possessed children in a cornfield. Or the case of Chapter 8: Arcade Arcano, where the host takes a vacation to make way for two kids recording the Kirlian version of Level X, analyzing a game called Slasher that is not only (supposedly) cursed with a digital killer manifesting in the town, but is animated in the style of old 8-bit games and graphic adventures from LucasArts. Something that had been seen at some point in an episode of Alejo y Valentina, but not quite like this. A superb work of image, video, and obviously script.

Kirlian is a playground, not just for Ponce, but also for writer Hernán Bengoa and musician Marcelo Cataldo.

Kirlian is a place strange enough that the presence of a werewolf is treated as an everyday occurrence, and a group of bloodthirsty “vampires” also happens to be a bunch of rebellious teenagers hanging out in the square. Witches? Sure, one grew up with them. Ghosts? Part of the local ectoplasmic fauna. Anyone from Kirlian knows they shouldn’t go out at night, that the police don’t patrol at night, and that the only ones outside when the sun goes down are those who prey on the living.

The world in which Kirlian operates is one where the VCR is a novelty that seems to threaten the harmony between the radio and its listeners, where the customs of its oldest inhabitants clash with the new waves brought by the youth, a world of kids congregating in arcades, a world that no longer exists, and which Ponce doesn’t just bring back in an exercise of nostalgia because nostalgia sells, but because it cannot be told any other way. It’s an extinct world, a world patient and sensitive to wonder and horror.

Among the layers that build this universe is its nature as an anthology, where each story is self-contained yet paints, chapter by chapter, the who, when, and why of Kirlian, while simultaneously constructing a much larger narrative. There is a constant battle, a tug of war between the outside and the inside. The external is represented by the capital, the figure of a ghostly governor, by invisible institutions, the pressure to arrive, discover, understand, perhaps conquer what exists in Kirlian. To kill the mystery. And on the opposite side, the sinister, the ominous, the arcane, incomprehensible powers that float over the city in the form of night creatures, witches and curses, or directly from Lovecraftian entities.

There is a question that constantly hovers in the series: are the supernatural terrors that exist in the town a greater danger than the interference from the outside? Is a teenager turning into a giant mosquito more dangerous than the idea that everything we know can change, that our routine can disappear, even if it is a monstrous status quo? The answer doesn't matter, because the outside arrives with unstoppable force in the shape of a comet, the final word on any kind of debate. The external invader, the internal mystery, all will come to an end in a few days, more precisely on April 30, 1987, when the fireball passes over the town and finally brings the end.

There is a question that constantly hovers in the series: are the supernatural terrors that exist in the town a greater danger than the interference from the outside?

Cristian Ponce exercises narrative in an atypical way with nine out of ten chapters that recount the eve of the comet with stories of cursed houses, of failed alien abductions and body snatchers. Nine stories that play with the anthology while sowing the elements of a superb worldbuilding: what was Kirlian like before the new radio host arrived? Who awakened the horrors that roam the streets of the town every night? And when the hour of the comet finally arrives, chapter ten comes and everything is over. The story takes place a day after the night of the comet, and the number of unanswered questions triples. But there’s always time for one more midnight song.

The movie premiere

And that song played this year, because in 2026, The Kirlian Frequency premiered in local theaters, the film that mixes live-action scenes taking place inside the radio with animated stories happening in its cursed streets. Animation that shifts from a silhouette-based style and the anonymous forms of its inhabitants to a more traditional one where, perhaps, this light that bathes the characters is also the one that illuminates the enigmas. A wonderful collage that blends superb performances with illustrations like photo novels by artist Jules Mamone.

The night of the comet finally arrives, and the host decides to celebrate this last broadcast (and perhaps the last activity before the town transforms into who knows what) with a special program where four guests come to tell their story: Gladys Mounier (the town's high school principal), who narrates the danger of Fleisch Welt, a pornographic magazine that, like Nietzsche's abyss, also stares back; Julio Vergara, a real estate agent and the protagonist of a story of otherworldly agricultural development; Paz Núñez, a social activist, entangled in a very dark story of child gangs and monsters; and finally, Vincente Larrosa, director of the other radio station in town, sharing a testimony of lycanthropy and misfortune. Or maybe it’s something more terrible, perhaps it’s the story where all stories converge. The Aleph of everything that is wrong in Ingeniero Kirlian.

Or maybe it’s something more terrible, perhaps it’s the story where all stories converge. The Aleph of everything that is wrong in Ingeniero Kirlian.

The evolution of The Kirlian Frequency is very visible in the film. Just as with the camp overdose that gave way to an unbearable darkness between the second season of Twin Peaks and the film Fire Walk With Me, the last chapter of the series (El Silencio) tonally connects with a much more oppressive reality. During its hour and a half, a much more horrendous side of the town is revealed: the monsters are always present, but the ones with the sharpest fangs are the commissioners, politicians, and architects. There’s a notion of constant revelation in which the most horrible creatures show their seams, the zipper on their backs. It’s no coincidence that the style of impersonal silhouettes is replaced by a clear image of each protagonist. Because this is a revelation, one after another, of every unfathomable mystery that has emerged since that first chapter, in this “Country of April.” Everything that wanted to be asked about Kirlian but never dared to ask.

The live action opens up a ton of possibilities that Ponce eagerly exploits. The main element is the presence of Nicolás Van de Moortele as The Midnight Host. The sinister eloquence and the aura of mystery between the presenter of the horror of the week and a sort of executor of karmic justice among the inhabitants of Kirlian is reinforced by the constant gaze of small fiery eyes. The skull mask, the unusual pompadour, the burned and deformed skin, the personification that Van de Moortele gives with an iconic voice and a pulp yet relatable text, has in Nicolás Pérez's body a gesturality that is never limited by his covered face, because his hands become a narrative vehicle more than sufficient. Every word emphasized with a gesture, highlighting the aura that looms over his guests, demanding a story in exchange for a favor that could change the course of their lives. But the rest of his characters leave an indelible mark. The performances of Adriana Ferrer, Germán Baudino, and Edgardo Simone.

The collage of styles that is part of the DNA of The Kirlian Frequency has aspects like the already characteristic soundtrack by Marcelo Cataldo that injects the necessary eighties atmosphere. Compositions that may remind one of Carpenter's songs for Halloween, that eerie and ghostly feeling, mixed with revolutionary and furious synthesizers. Beyond that vintage and timeless style that operates in the live-action moments, the use of tracking shots, zooms, and fades is anchored by frames that are directly taken from a comic. Ponce directs as if he were writing a comic.

From the way the narrative of the film (and not to mention the series) is constructed, the atmosphere and tension of its stories, the attention to detail shots and close-ups of each character, the appearances of the impossible and the representation of violence, everything has a comic sensitivity. That’s why decisions like the visibility of what were once living outlines of shining eyes, the use of medium shots inside the radio, and the trust in the viewer's imagination that turns a yellow glow and some sound effects into the idea of an angry mob work so well. Even, Ponce dares to mix live action with animation in what is, for me, a scene that stands alongside the apotheotic climax of “Historia de lo Oculto” (2020).

All night, every night

"Is it true that the world ends tonight? Kirlian is not the world"

It’s hard not to be enthusiastic about something like The Kirlian Frequency. It’s evident from miles away that it’s made with passion, with an artistic and playful vision, this idea of a playground where one can pay homage to what accompanied them during their childhood and adolescence. The trend for many years has been false homage, the abuse of nostalgia, enjoyment diluted by an increasingly manipulated past. But I believe that Ponce, Bengoa, and Cataldo create a mythology in Kirlian that not only serves to emulate but to rise to the level of what is admired, of the idols, of what led one to create. In every scene, in every line of dialogue, in every synthesizer note, there’s something smuggled, appropriated, assimilated, synthesized. It doesn’t have to be Hawkings, nor the CIA, nor a character named Joey. It’s a town named Ingeniero Kirlian, it’s a neighborhood union, and it’s a defector named Valerga. They are our werewolves, our body snatchers, a small exercise in fantastic sovereignty. How can I not feel this way, if that dog (surely possessed) is still there?

Something lies on the roads of Buenos Aires. It hides among detours, roads that don’t appear on maps, in those places where cars and houses aren’t locked. There’s a stillness that comes with the countryside, with the starry skies as far as the eye can see, with the silence of those worlds that exist within ours, but shifted slightly a few inches to the other side. But there’s not enough distance to separate us from the mystery.

It may be a small radio, but the signal from 96.6 goes far beyond what its antenna allows. Even if we’re in the middle of four walls, in a building packed with apartments, where we can hear the faintest murmur of the neighbor, that voice that comes with the mysterious stillness will eventually reach us. Because there’s always a shadow moving in the night. There’s always a rumor growing in the darkness. There’s always a scary story to tell. All night. Every night.