Julio Torres makes bureaucracy funny by taking its demands seriously and following them into absurdity. We value the peculiar worlds he builds, even when his fondness for a detour keeps a finished joke going.
Fi1m perspective
In Fantasmas (2024), Julio Torres gives hamsters nightclubs and allows the idea enough time to become more than a passing joke. We laughed because he takes their nightlife seriously enough not to explain the joke. His fictional namesake faces eviction and must find proof of existence, but the search keeps making room for other people's concerns and peculiarities. It is funny, occasionally overextended television, and we would willingly follow him through most of its digressions.
He has carried the sketch writer's habits into longer stories. Torres wrote for Saturday Night Live from 2016 to 2019. With Fred Armisen and Ana Fabrega, he co-created Los Espookys (2018), about friends staging fake supernatural events. The special My Favourite Shapes (2019) uses objects to tell personal stories, giving his interest in unlikely subjects a form of its own. Problemista (2024), his feature debut as writer-director, pairs him with Tilda Swinton in a story of creative struggles and visa bureaucracy.
Torres is particularly sharp when Fantasmas turns towards art and the entertainment business. The expectation that a person's identity should be ready to package and sell gets the irritation it deserves. That pressure gives the series a reason to keep returning to Julio, even when the next unlikely encounter seems more immediately inviting.
As a performer, Torres helps by leaving the strangeness unexplained. He plays the fictional Julio without straining to reassure us, leaving the other performers room to be peculiar in their own ways. Martine Gutierrez's Vanesja and Tomas Matos's Chester remain distinct company rather than rivals in an eccentricity competition. It is a useful restraint from a writer-director who otherwise gives each diversion considerable freedom.
That freedom needs firmer limits in Fantasmas: some sketches continue after their jokes have finished. A miniature story can grow out of a gag, but not every gag merits the space. The housing problem keeps the series moving without quite preventing it from dawdling. Start here for Torres as writer, director and performer, with a little patience for the moments when he could have called a halt.
Biography
Julio Torres is a Salvadoran-American comedian, writer and actor. Born in San Salvador in 1987, he moved to New York to study at The New School. He began his career writing for The Chris Gethard Show on truTV before joining the writing staff of Saturday Night Live.
Torres co-created, wrote and starred in the HBO series Los Espookys (2019–2022). He wrote, directed and starred in the film Problemista (2024) and created, wrote, directed and starred in the HBO series Fantasmas (2024), in which he appears as a version of himself. He is also credited as Juan Pablo in the 2026 film La bola negra. His voice work includes roles in Nimona (2023) and series such as Bob's Burgers and The Great North. Both Los Espookys and Fantasmas received Peabody Awards.
