History of the Occult 2020

Shot in stark black-and-white, this 1987 Buenos Aires-set thriller unfolds on the night of the final episode of the controversial late-night program 60 Minutos Antes de la Medianoche. The show has been canceled after a year-long investigation that promises to expose President Belasco’s economic policies, corruption, and alleged ties to the occult. The live broadcast is anchored by host Alfredo and will feature a poised lineup: a hard-nosed interview with Senator Matías Linares, a sharp-witted sociologist-writer Daniel Aguilar, and Adrián Marcato, the vice president and co-founder of Kingdom Corporate, Argentina’s largest corporation, long rumored to be entwined with warlock lore. A mysterious notebook found at the scene of a ritual murder a year earlier braids Belasco to the coven and to Kingdom Corporate, hinting at a conspiracy that reaches into the country’s power structure. Watching from a safe house, the show’s producers and journalists — María, Lucio, Jorge Federicci, and Abel — await Marcato’s on-air confirmation, while their backup Natalia combs the city for a hidden base that might hold the critical evidence before midnight.

As the program goes to air, Marcato puts Linares on the spot, pressing him about the truth behind his family and his loyalties. Linares answers with two, yet Marcato insists there are three, claiming he has forgotten the youngest daughter because she no longer belongs to “this reality.” Off-screen, the team has been dosed with hallucinogenic tannis root from Von Merkens labs, provided by Belasco’s opponents, a ritual designed to coax the elusive evidence into the open before the stroke of midnight. The confession is more than a reveal: Marcato admits he is a warlock, having been initiated in childhood by his grandmother, a revelation that reframes every prior claim and motive.

On the set, Jorge begins to glimpse visions of a red light and a strange, burned figure, while Maria probes whether Marcato’s past holds more secrets than his present public persona suggests. Maria’s responses about Marcato’s supposed lack of children clash with the family lore that viewers have heard, deepening the tension. The ritual team pushes forward with the séance-like ritual and witnesses disturbing sights: a flashing red light, a burned figure, and a tentacled being that seems to press against the edge of reality itself. A flashback reveals the dark bargain at the center of it all: Marcato was cast out by his coven, and his alliance with the journalists was born of a deal — expose Belasco on national television in exchange for access to a hidden artifact the coven guards in secret bases all over Buenos Aires.

When Jorge awakens, Lucio is missing and Abel is dead, fueling Maria’s suspicion that Abel was a warlock infiltrated by the coven; she claims to have killed him after he killed Lucio and attacked her. Jorge’s questions about the children persist, and Natalia, having retrieved the artifact, is pursued by a coven member whom she ends up shooting. As the clock nears midnight, Natalia arrives at the studio bearing the artifact: a modern-day smartphone. A tremoring Marcato phones his daughter and lays bare everything: Kingdom Corporate is, in fact, a coven of warlocks who struck a pact with beings from another world to install Belasco and seize control of the Argentinean government. In a final, breath-stealing moment, he tells his daughter to read a single word aloud from a book, and then he speaks to the audience one last time before the broadcast cuts to color. Marcato vanishes from the frame, and Alfredo watches with a stunned expression, asking if anyone heard the word, while Maria and Jorge, still in black-and-white, stare at the TV in hollow disbelief.