‘Beasts Of Death’ Trailer Unveils A ‘Tropi-Goth,’ Grief-Fueled Journey Inspired By Andean Mythology (EXCLUSIVE)

We’re excited to debut the first trailer for Beasts of Death (Bestias de la Muerte), an animated fantasy short from writer-director Sandra Powers that transforms the emotional stages of grief into a visually striking supernatural adventure inspired by Andean mythology.

The eight-minute film follows 16-year-old Claudia, who, devastated by the loss of her mother, performs an ancient Andean ritual to summon the Beasts of Death in the hope of bringing her back. Instead, she is dragged into a nightmarish realm where she must confront monstrous embodiments of denial, rage, and bargaining before she can escape.

Beasts of Death premiered in competition at this year’s Animayo International Film Festival, where it won the audience award. The production brings together artists from the U.S., Mexico, and Peru, with animation by Mexico City’s Viva Calavera and voice performances recorded in Lima.

For Powers, the project is deeply autobiographical. “But the story is a very personal story,” she told Cartoon Brew. “It’s actually a story based on an experience that I went through when I was younger, when I lost my mother.”

Although Powers has spent more than 15 years as an animation editor at studios including Nickelodeon (Elena of Avalor), Disney (Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur), and, most recently, Flying Bark on an unannounced Netflix series, she said she has wanted to tell her own stories for years, but was waiting for the right opportunity.

“I keep creating for other people, but I want to be able to tell my own story,” she said. “It’s really, really hard to jump from editor to creator, especially in this industry.”

That opportunity came after Powers was selected for the Latino Film Institute’s Spark Animation Fellowship, sponsored by the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity. Working under the fellowship’s one-year deadline, she assembled a team that included many of her former collaborators from Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur to bring the film to life.

Rather than treating the film’s Beasts of Death as conventional monsters, Powers designed them as manifestations of grief itself.

“The beasts all actually represent different stages of grief,” she explained. “Each of the challenges that she has to overcome is essentially a stage of grief.”

Because of the short’s runtime, she narrowed Claudia’s emotional journey to three stages: denial, rage, and bargaining. The story ultimately builds toward acceptance, although how it arrives there is a spoiler, so you won’t find out from us.

The creatures themselves draw inspiration from Supay, the shape-shifting ruler of the underworld in Andean mythology. But the film’s visual identity is equally rooted in Powers’ upbringing.

“I’m Peruvian, but I was raised in Miami, Florida,” she said. “The whole ‘tropi-goth’ thing comes honestly from my childhood.”

She describes “tropi-goth” as the collision of two worlds: the pastel colors, neon lights, and tropical atmosphere of 1990s Miami with the darker imagery and folklore that fascinated her growing up.

“When the tropical meets the gothic, essentially, which is me fully,” she said. “The tropical side does feel very Latino, but it feels very Miami Latino to me… The Andean is just coming out of me, probably, because it’s in my bloodline.”

Music also plays a central role in the film, reflecting Powers’ parallel career directing opera. The score features singer-songwriter Elizaveta, whose fusion of operatic and electronic music became a defining element of the project.

“Her voice is basically the voice of the mother throughout the soundtrack of the entire film,” Powers said. “There are sometimes moments where there are hundreds of tracks of her voice doing different kinds of textures.”

She added that vocal layers and chanting are woven throughout the film to create an emotional atmosphere that connects both Claudia’s mother and the supernatural world she enters.

Powers believes her years as an editor also shaped the finished film, particularly its pacing. During production, she restructured a seven-minute musical sequence herself over a single weekend before handing it back to the storyboard and music teams for refinement.

“I shaped the entire thing,” she said. “I shaped the whole project to kind of have its own unique feel, because I knew the arc that it needed everywhere.”