“It breaks the molds of queer horror,” is how queer activist and journalist Lucas Fauno (2025) defines Luz Diabla. This eleven-minute short, released in 2025 and created by artists Gervasio Canda, Paula “Sukermercado” Boffo, and Patricio Plaza, co-produced by Ojo Raro and Lakeside Animation Inc., introduces Martín, a queer character driving at full speed across the Argentine pampas—an eternal symbol in the country’s film and literary tradition that condenses, in its vastness, the complex contradictions of its history, economy, and identity. Luz Diabla is a new addition to a growing corpus of queer animated representation around the word, and demonstrates how said representation is refracted by regional history and culture.

Distracted by his phone, high, and blasting music, he suddenly sees a light ahead that forces him to swerve and crash into a tree. Next to the tree—as with so many others scattered across Argentina’s rural landscapes—stands an altar to Gauchito Gil. Antonio Mamerto Gil Núñez, his real name, was a gaucho from the province of Corrientes, born around 1840 and executed in 1878. Turned into a figure of popular devotion, he does not belong to the official Catholic Church. Legend says that before dying, he predicted the healing of his executioner’s son, who later venerated him as a miracle worker. Since then, thousands of devotees have regarded him as a folk saint. His main sanctuary attracts crowds every January 8, and his cult—recognizable by its red flags and “Gauchito” figurines—has spread throughout Argentina and neighboring countries.

Unharmed, Martín gets out of the car and walks toward a pulpería (a type of rural store and bar, the local equivalent of a Western saloon) visible a few yards away, its lights still on. Inside, he encounters several men who seem to embody his opposite: gauchos representing traditional Argentine masculinity. Martín, by contrast, is half-naked, with painted nails, a modern haircut, dyed hair, earrings, and piercings. In contrast with the electronic music he was playing in his car, they play folk songs on the guitar.

Sensing the hostility in the air, two of the men quickly leave. He remains alone with the bartender—who, with his red scarf and long hair, visually recalls Gauchito Gil—and an older, sturdier man with completely white eyes. The latter warns him: “It’s Saint Bartholomew’s night, and something devilish is loose. On nights like this, anything can happen.”

The scene immediately recalls a classic of horror: Dracula. At the start of the novel, when Jonathan Harker is about to depart to the Count’s castle, the locals warn him that it is the eve of St. George’s Day, when “all the evil things in the world have full sway.” Later, on the journey to the castle, the coachman (later implied to be Dracula himself) repeatedly stops when he sees flickering blue flames burning in the distance. Harker observes that the driver gathers stones around the flames and, for a moment, seems transparent in their light. Later, the Count explains that local folklore holds those flames mark places where treasure is buried.

These ghostly lights closely parallel the “luz mala” of Argentine folklore: a bright nocturnal glow near the ground, sometimes still, sometimes moving or pursuing those who see it. It is said to be the tormented soul of someone buried without Christian rites, or the “lantern of the Devil,” linked to hidden treasures. Feared by rural dwellers, it has inspired countless tales and protective rituals. Today, it is often explained as a natural phenomenon: will-o’-the-wisp gases, ball lightning, or moonlight reflecting off decaying remains.

Back in the animated short, Martín, feeling paranoid as the pill he took before the crash starts to take effect, finds another Gauchito Gil altar inside the pulpería, with a small statue, candles, and bottles. In a panic, he knocks everything over to escape through a window behind it. Running through the woods, he encounters what we might call the Luz Diabla, a vast, psychedelic ball of light that lures him in. Inside, he finds a vision of an electronic rave full of people.

Consumed by ecstasy, he dances and revels in the homoerotic atmosphere. But the vision turns into a nightmare when an organic blackness begins to engulf him. The spell breaks when the blindfolded bartender severs his supernatural bindings. Martín awakens in a dark crater in the morning. The two gauchos from the previous night stand before him, pull him out of the pit, and carry him away on horseback.

As contemporary Argentine writers like Mariana Enríquez and Dolores Reyes have done—and as one of the directors, Paula Boffo, already did in her short and comic Santa Sombra—this short explores local supernatural beliefs fused with contemporary realism to construct horror. It draws from the dark imagination we have built around the fearsome vastness of the countryside, its unspeakable forces, and the ambiguous nature of those who inhabit it. As Fauno (2025) summarizes: “By taking certain stereotypes and structures from the horror genre, it immerses us in humanity’s most foundational fears.”

References

Gutiérrez, Lucas “Fauno.” 2025. “‘Luz Diabla’, la animación que rompe los moldes del terror queer.” PAGINA 12, April 2. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/814941-ojo-raro-la-animacion-que-rompe-los-moldes-del-terror-queer.