“Hot land” is the frequently pejorative term that the inhabitants of Bogotá and central Colombia use to refer to the country's coastal areas and the periphery of the landlocked capital. Paradoxically, it was in the warm weather region of Valle del Cauca where the Gothic—traditionally set in cold climates—was adapted most effectively during the second half of the twentieth century. With their movies and short stories, Carlos Mayolo, Luis Ospina, and Andrés Caicedo, the so-called Cali group (also referred to by many as Caliwood), Tropicalized the Gothic genre, hybridizing tropes and characters initially created for the damp and foggy areas of Northern Europe and New England. The Valle del Cauca sugarcane plantations became new haunting grounds for vampires, ghosts, and other gothic horrors. These Northern Gothic monsters mixed perfectly both with monsters from Colombian folklore, such as the Madremonte, a mythical protector of the Colombian jungles, and with the monstrous local bourgeoisie, such as violent sugar plantation landlords. In turn, the sunny and humid city of Cali and the wooded Valle del Cauca were turned into gothic settings, full of haunted mansions and enchanted estates.

In this section, I will focus my attention on the Tropical Gothic productions of Caliwood and on the gothic horror of film director Jairo Pinilla Téllez, a pioneer of horror films in Colombia and also a native of Cali (caleño in Colombian Spanish). Besides, I will analyze one of the most innovative transformations in the Colombian Gothic in recent decades: the movie Saudó, laberinto de almas (Saudó, Labyrinth of Souls) . Directed by Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza, the film mixes elements of the gothic tradition with Afro-Colombian myths from communities that inhabit the state of Chocó, also on the Pacific coast of Colombia. The result is a gothic film that powerfully addresses the racism against Afro-Colombian communities.

Hendrix Hinestroza uses tropes and techniques of the Northern Gothic, such as nightmares and omens, witchcraft and occultism, and the impossibility of escaping past sins to construct a Colombian Gothic filmic narrative. Hendrix Hinestroza's protagonist, a successful Afro-Colombian doctor living in Cali, begins to have nightmares and suffers supernatural occurrences that compel him to return to his hometown of Chocó. This return to his past means going back to one of the poorest regions of the country and an affirmation that the problems represented by Colombia's oppression of Chocó demand redress.