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New modulation to the existential conflict between being human and being a vampire
The parallels between vampirism and gay sex
LGBT+ subtexts in horror films and series, especially those about vampires, are nothing new.
More than "horror" creatures, vampires have become, in a way, a symbol of queer liberation, as these "monsters" have never been judged too much by who they have sex with... or perhaps I should say "whose neck they bite." Rather, they are the villains of the story because, well... they usually mercilessly kill their victims. Or at the very least, they turn them into vampires once they suck the blood from their throats to "feed".
In fact, if there is one thing that has characterized these creatures of folklore, it is that they are extremely sexual beings. Therefore, it's no surprise that narratives filled with these entities that feed on the vital essence of other living beings (usually in the form of blood) are replete with eroticism, and in many cases, homoeroticism.
A representative of supernatural horror combined with the BL genre, Thai director Ark Saroj Kunatanad, from "Shadow" (2023) to the present, has constructed suggestive metaphors about the monsters that live in the popular imagination.
If in his aforementioned debut film he inhabited that malevolent instance in a story that revolves around strange nightmares, terrifying hallucinations and focused more on heterosexual love stories rather than gay romance, despite being advertised as a love story between boys, in 'My Golden Blood' (2025) he approaches queer love through vampirism. It is a modulation in the approach to the myth, advisable to watch alongside the film 'Red Wine in the Dark Night', written and directed by Golf Tanwarin Sukkhapisit in 2015, and the series 'OMG! Vampire', directed by Phadej Onlahung in 2024, 'Vampire Project', the production of Studio Wabi Sabi, and '1000 Years Old', a series produced by Feel Good Bangkok and H8 Studio, directed by Champ Weerachit Thongjila, all of the BL genre.
I haven't read the novel it's based on so I can't speak to its merits as an adaptation, but I have no doubt that the director subverts the usual trope of the queer vampire who tries to seduce his victim into becoming one of them, as we can see in 'The Lost Boys', the classic horror thriller directed in 1987 by Joel Schumacher.
As an introduction to the plot
In the Thai supernatural romance drama series, Tong (Gawin Caskey), a cheerful and optimistic 20-year-old, has been tricked into believing he has hemophilia. But this lie, authored by a mysterious and distant being, has saved his life, as it has helped hide the fact that he possesses a rare and precious blood type known as Golden Blood, irresistible to vampires. If it were discovered that Tong possesses such powerful blood, it would be the reason why thousands of vampires would hunt him down.
To prevent this, Mark (Joss Way-ar Sangngern), the handsome 200-year-old vampire heir who never knew the meaning of life until he met Tong, will do everything in his power to protect him from himself and from the vampires who refuse to abide by the first and most important rule: "Do not kill any human being under any circumstances."
Joss trying to protect Gawin is the gayest thing ever. The seduction of one man by another is something very hot.
The initial encounter between the human and the supernatural creature develops with a strong homoerotic component, as Tong watches Mark emerge half-naked from the pool, or as the vampire inserts Tong's injured finger with a broken cup in his mouth and promptly drinks the blood that flows out, in a vampiric effort to prevent the sweet and potent scent of blood from being smelled by the rest of the vampires. It is lust, desire, eroticism, sensuality that the camera films.
The parallels between vampirism and gay sex are present in every minute of the story.
Just as he first portrayed him in 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker' (1972), Ark Saroj Kunatanad brought vampires out of their Gothic castles and into the modern world. Here, the Thai director follows the same path—Mark and his family currently live in Bangkok and produce the Amarita Stem Cell Serum, a highly sought-after product for those seeking to survive the aging process. This product serves as a facade to justify the fact that the passage of time has left no visible marks on them—with the difference that the vampire protagonist here is a romantic figure, an adventurer who has survived for centuries, hoping to find love and must fulfill the supreme mission set by Thara (Um Apasiri Nitibhon), the leader of the vampires, to become the successor to the Amarittrakul family and restore peaceful coexistence between non-humans and humans.
After the plot and main characters are introduced, the series unfolds like any college BL, with two boys discovering each other and themselves, but with the peculiarity that one is a human and the other a vampire who must protect his beloved from the vampires' appetite for golden blood.
'My Golden Blood' is a series with greater achievements, both in writing and visually, compared to other Thai-produced BL series in the vampire subgenre, but it's still not quite perfect. We have to forgive a couple of conceptual glitches and the poor special effects, especially considering how plausible the other visual aspects are; points that the former could have smoothed out or addressed with much more tact; and the latter with a bigger budget, but for the rest, it's a good love story between a supernatural creature and a human being.
The viewer will witness direct attacks by vampires against humans (such as the one that occurred in a beef store, to suggest the immortal creatures' strong affinity for blood), which connects the series, perhaps, with the imaginary of how much could be assumed as a "normal" vampire series.
Gawin and Joss: performances and characters
I think it's a truly delightful idea to have Gawin as Tong. Isn't Gawin, that policeman, artist, and all-around tough guy, who, called Dan in 'Not Me,' was also incredibly emotional, and while that role had distanced him from his real-life personality, he comes closer to it with the guitar-playing, song-writing, Saifa-loving musician in the cheerful romantic comedy series 'Enchanté'? Isn't Gawin the same man whose character, Mhork, a trouble-loving teenager, must grow up in 'Dark Blue Kiss' to overcome his childish behavior, attitude problems, and anger issues? Isn't her beauty, with those soft features despite her large, muscular body, and her unwavering eyes, the closest thing to someone who, with the help of a vampire, must fight for her own life? I think so.
Through his eyes, the character exceptionally conveys Tong's gay awakening when he discovers Mark emerging from a pool, half-naked in a bathing suit. Through his perception, the viewer discovers the confusion, perplexity, emotion, and immaturity of a character that, having just left adolescence, travels from the countryside to the big city. If initially only to continue his studies, it will also be to discover the terror, the darkness that looms over him, the proximity of death, extermination, the hope of survival with the help and protection of Mark... love.
The character portrayed by Gawin is very believable as he reveals his true reality through Mark's lips: The sweet scent of his golden blood would cause chaos and awaken the vampires' thirst. He would never become one of these beings of Gothic culture if his blood were devoured by one of them. The vital liquid that runs through his veins is so precious that vampires would not stop drinking it until he has drunk it all. And although, quite understandably, he initially hesitates upon learning that the being accompanying him is a vampire, he soon understands that Mark has decided to protect him since he was a child, when his mother died after being bitten by a vampire.
While his performance in the pilot episode didn't quite convince me, Joss Way-ar Sangngern has proven his acting talent in subsequent episodes. I find him to be a very interesting actor. His well-contoured body, his strong and confident voice, and his penetrating eyes, combined with dramatic, yet non-intrusive makeup, manage to disguise the actor's impeccable appearance, making him seem oddly and suggestively inappropriate.
Before tasting golden blood, Mark was an empty being with no personal needs, feelings, or desires. He's the character who intrigues me the most because he must face profound dilemmas: on the one hand, he must protect Tong from the other vampires, but how will he do so, knowing that a single drop of her blood makes him lose control over himself and the feelings and emotions he experiences after meeting Tong—feelings and emotions he'd long forgotten when he stopped being human and became a vampire. Nothing is more logical than for the audience to wonder if Mark is in love with Tong or just yearns for golden blood. Are his feelings for Tong genuine, or are they just the result of having drunk her golden blood? How will he accomplish the mission Thara entrusted to him?
While fascinating, the conclusions reached by Mark's character have been explored before – Mark is an existentialist vampire – and reveal aspects of the ancient myth that have also been considered before: "Who do you think I am? What you need to ask is what creature am I?" Mark will gradually introduce himself to his astonished protégé.
Would the series have won with another lead actor? It's a question I asked myself after watching the first episode. Today I think he's the one. The chemistry between the two actors is incredible, and Joss has grown in confidence alongside Gawin to successfully carry out his performance.
Some important aspects to highlight
Long and dynamic camera movements, a successful production design by the renowned Samorapum Pakdeethai, admirable lighting work that successfully illuminates sets and uses chiaroscuro to denote melancholy and bring out the Thai capital in a pictorial way, depicted with genuine taste, are some of its achievements.
Apart from some technical and interpretive defects, the big problem with 'My Golden Blood' is that, on the one hand, it fails to distance itself from Hollywood standards and the general Anglo-Saxon canon, from Universal to Hammer Films; While on the other hand, it shows a clear intention to tell us that one man is better than another for being hypermasculine, heterosexual, an immaculate guardian of testosterone, and identified as white/Western, who is recognized for attributes such as attractiveness, handsomeness, sexy...
'My Golden Blood' is a series created to show some of the stereotypes of masculinity, especially those associated with the role of provider and being strong, competitive, rational, brave, inexpressive, dominant, independent... qualities that naturalize violent behavior, as well as to show off the mesomorphic bodies of Fluke and Joss Way-ar, but also to demonstrate the artistic talent of the two actors, and Fluke's warm and sweet voice as a singer.
In several scenes, especially those in which the character played by Joss can be seen half-naked, or in the one in which with a single movement of his finger a vampire leader stops an entire pack of hungry Dracula emulators ready to feed on golden blood, Ark Saroj Kunatanad worships orthodox masculinity, that social construct that evolves in response to social and cultural changes, and which, considered largely hegemonic, is evidenced in the dominance of men over women and other less powerful men.
In addition to violating the essence of BL and what distinguishes it from mainstream, white, Western, gay media, with his excessive worship of hegemony the Thai director deprives us as viewers of drawing our own conclusions, giving us a distorted view of this social phenomenon, widely exploited in Thai BL series, without taking into account that contemporary changes in masculinity have seen the emergence of new masculinities that challenge traditional male stereotypes.
In many ways, rather than showing sexual difference uncensored, ending down the stereotypes that often still surround queer characters, breaking with past hegemonic and ancestral conventions, reflecting the lives and experiences of LGBT+ people on screen, validating the identities, experiences, and emotions of members of this human collective, demonstrating that the love, struggles, and dreams of gay people are just as valid and important as those of anyone else, these kinds of politics, still present in many Thai boy-love dramas, take BL back to more reactionary than progressive places in the queer imaginary.
Although these aesthetic aspects manage to cloud the story, the series explores themes such as the loneliness that comes with immortality. Joss Way-ar Sangngern's Mark is a vampire with a soul. Sad and lonely, his mission to protect Tong has led him to distance himself from his fellow human beings, even those of his "own blood," in the universe of living beings.
In essence, what the Thai director does is simply take the aggiornada vampire imagery created by the British production company in the 1960s and... Add little else. In its low-budget gothic horror films, the studio behind 'Dracula' and 'The Curse of Frankenstein' had transformed vampires into ruthless beings with enormous sexual magnetism; And while the series shows some of these wild subjects who run to devour their victims as if they were zombies eager to eat brains, Ark castrated their malevolent intentions, turning one of its protagonists into a seductive, tragic, solitary and melancholic antihero..., eager to find true love.
It's a valid romantic vision, but here Ark repeats what has been exploited on other occasions: the protagonists of 'My Golden Blood' seem to have stepped out of a gay porn casting call, dripping not only with water when they emerge from a pool, but, above all, exuding sexuality and beauty, with one of them suffering from having to repress his wild instincts every time he is near the boy with the golden blood.
The main dilemma: the existential conflict between being human and being a vampire
As expected, Tong won't beg Mark to be transformed into a vampire and live immortality by his side. Which leads me to ask: how will the two of them live out their love affair? If Tong doesn't become a vampire, she'll die at some point, while Mark would be condemned, as he has been up to now, to a sad and lonely eternal survival without the person he loves.
If we were to follow the imagery of vampire films and TV shows to the present, the ideal scenario would be that Tong would be bitten by Mark, allowing them both to enjoy immortality. But as we all know, Tong cannot be bitten by a vampire and survive. In this context, the obvious questions arise: how could the two then manage to live together forever? How could the love between the two survive? How will they experience the existential conflict between being human and being a vampire, a conflict that Mark doesn't have and that, if necessary, will make him noticeably desperate for the human nature that Tong refuses to relinquish today and would find difficult to abandon tomorrow?
By drinking the golden blood, Mark has begun to react, feeling emotions and feelings that draw him closer to humans. Could this be the solution? The vampire transformed into a human being, going against everything established in the vampire myth to date? I find it very original, but then a new question arises: How could Mark maintain the physical strength, perception, power of willpower, hypnosis, intuition, transformation, summoning and control over animals, humans and other undead, and other characteristics that distinguish him as a vampire, necessary to carry out his mission of protecting Tong?
LGBT+ subtexts in horror films and series, especially those about vampires, are nothing new.
More than "horror" creatures, vampires have become, in a way, a symbol of queer liberation, as these "monsters" have never been judged too much by who they have sex with... or perhaps I should say "whose neck they bite." Rather, they are the villains of the story because, well... they usually mercilessly kill their victims. Or at the very least, they turn them into vampires once they suck the blood from their throats to "feed".
In fact, if there is one thing that has characterized these creatures of folklore, it is that they are extremely sexual beings. Therefore, it's no surprise that narratives filled with these entities that feed on the vital essence of other living beings (usually in the form of blood) are replete with eroticism, and in many cases, homoeroticism.
A representative of supernatural horror combined with the BL genre, Thai director Ark Saroj Kunatanad, from "Shadow" (2023) to the present, has constructed suggestive metaphors about the monsters that live in the popular imagination.
If in his aforementioned debut film he inhabited that malevolent instance in a story that revolves around strange nightmares, terrifying hallucinations and focused more on heterosexual love stories rather than gay romance, despite being advertised as a love story between boys, in 'My Golden Blood' (2025) he approaches queer love through vampirism. It is a modulation in the approach to the myth, advisable to watch alongside the film 'Red Wine in the Dark Night', written and directed by Golf Tanwarin Sukkhapisit in 2015, and the series 'OMG! Vampire', directed by Phadej Onlahung in 2024, 'Vampire Project', the production of Studio Wabi Sabi, and '1000 Years Old', a series produced by Feel Good Bangkok and H8 Studio, directed by Champ Weerachit Thongjila, all of the BL genre.
I haven't read the novel it's based on so I can't speak to its merits as an adaptation, but I have no doubt that the director subverts the usual trope of the queer vampire who tries to seduce his victim into becoming one of them, as we can see in 'The Lost Boys', the classic horror thriller directed in 1987 by Joel Schumacher.
As an introduction to the plot
In the Thai supernatural romance drama series, Tong (Gawin Caskey), a cheerful and optimistic 20-year-old, has been tricked into believing he has hemophilia. But this lie, authored by a mysterious and distant being, has saved his life, as it has helped hide the fact that he possesses a rare and precious blood type known as Golden Blood, irresistible to vampires. If it were discovered that Tong possesses such powerful blood, it would be the reason why thousands of vampires would hunt him down.
To prevent this, Mark (Joss Way-ar Sangngern), the handsome 200-year-old vampire heir who never knew the meaning of life until he met Tong, will do everything in his power to protect him from himself and from the vampires who refuse to abide by the first and most important rule: "Do not kill any human being under any circumstances."
Joss trying to protect Gawin is the gayest thing ever. The seduction of one man by another is something very hot.
The initial encounter between the human and the supernatural creature develops with a strong homoerotic component, as Tong watches Mark emerge half-naked from the pool, or as the vampire inserts Tong's injured finger with a broken cup in his mouth and promptly drinks the blood that flows out, in a vampiric effort to prevent the sweet and potent scent of blood from being smelled by the rest of the vampires. It is lust, desire, eroticism, sensuality that the camera films.
The parallels between vampirism and gay sex are present in every minute of the story.
Just as he first portrayed him in 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker' (1972), Ark Saroj Kunatanad brought vampires out of their Gothic castles and into the modern world. Here, the Thai director follows the same path—Mark and his family currently live in Bangkok and produce the Amarita Stem Cell Serum, a highly sought-after product for those seeking to survive the aging process. This product serves as a facade to justify the fact that the passage of time has left no visible marks on them—with the difference that the vampire protagonist here is a romantic figure, an adventurer who has survived for centuries, hoping to find love and must fulfill the supreme mission set by Thara (Um Apasiri Nitibhon), the leader of the vampires, to become the successor to the Amarittrakul family and restore peaceful coexistence between non-humans and humans.
After the plot and main characters are introduced, the series unfolds like any college BL, with two boys discovering each other and themselves, but with the peculiarity that one is a human and the other a vampire who must protect his beloved from the vampires' appetite for golden blood.
'My Golden Blood' is a series with greater achievements, both in writing and visually, compared to other Thai-produced BL series in the vampire subgenre, but it's still not quite perfect. We have to forgive a couple of conceptual glitches and the poor special effects, especially considering how plausible the other visual aspects are; points that the former could have smoothed out or addressed with much more tact; and the latter with a bigger budget, but for the rest, it's a good love story between a supernatural creature and a human being.
The viewer will witness direct attacks by vampires against humans (such as the one that occurred in a beef store, to suggest the immortal creatures' strong affinity for blood), which connects the series, perhaps, with the imaginary of how much could be assumed as a "normal" vampire series.
Gawin and Joss: performances and characters
I think it's a truly delightful idea to have Gawin as Tong. Isn't Gawin, that policeman, artist, and all-around tough guy, who, called Dan in 'Not Me,' was also incredibly emotional, and while that role had distanced him from his real-life personality, he comes closer to it with the guitar-playing, song-writing, Saifa-loving musician in the cheerful romantic comedy series 'Enchanté'? Isn't Gawin the same man whose character, Mhork, a trouble-loving teenager, must grow up in 'Dark Blue Kiss' to overcome his childish behavior, attitude problems, and anger issues? Isn't her beauty, with those soft features despite her large, muscular body, and her unwavering eyes, the closest thing to someone who, with the help of a vampire, must fight for her own life? I think so.
Through his eyes, the character exceptionally conveys Tong's gay awakening when he discovers Mark emerging from a pool, half-naked in a bathing suit. Through his perception, the viewer discovers the confusion, perplexity, emotion, and immaturity of a character that, having just left adolescence, travels from the countryside to the big city. If initially only to continue his studies, it will also be to discover the terror, the darkness that looms over him, the proximity of death, extermination, the hope of survival with the help and protection of Mark... love.
The character portrayed by Gawin is very believable as he reveals his true reality through Mark's lips: The sweet scent of his golden blood would cause chaos and awaken the vampires' thirst. He would never become one of these beings of Gothic culture if his blood were devoured by one of them. The vital liquid that runs through his veins is so precious that vampires would not stop drinking it until he has drunk it all. And although, quite understandably, he initially hesitates upon learning that the being accompanying him is a vampire, he soon understands that Mark has decided to protect him since he was a child, when his mother died after being bitten by a vampire.
While his performance in the pilot episode didn't quite convince me, Joss Way-ar Sangngern has proven his acting talent in subsequent episodes. I find him to be a very interesting actor. His well-contoured body, his strong and confident voice, and his penetrating eyes, combined with dramatic, yet non-intrusive makeup, manage to disguise the actor's impeccable appearance, making him seem oddly and suggestively inappropriate.
Before tasting golden blood, Mark was an empty being with no personal needs, feelings, or desires. He's the character who intrigues me the most because he must face profound dilemmas: on the one hand, he must protect Tong from the other vampires, but how will he do so, knowing that a single drop of her blood makes him lose control over himself and the feelings and emotions he experiences after meeting Tong—feelings and emotions he'd long forgotten when he stopped being human and became a vampire. Nothing is more logical than for the audience to wonder if Mark is in love with Tong or just yearns for golden blood. Are his feelings for Tong genuine, or are they just the result of having drunk her golden blood? How will he accomplish the mission Thara entrusted to him?
While fascinating, the conclusions reached by Mark's character have been explored before – Mark is an existentialist vampire – and reveal aspects of the ancient myth that have also been considered before: "Who do you think I am? What you need to ask is what creature am I?" Mark will gradually introduce himself to his astonished protégé.
Would the series have won with another lead actor? It's a question I asked myself after watching the first episode. Today I think he's the one. The chemistry between the two actors is incredible, and Joss has grown in confidence alongside Gawin to successfully carry out his performance.
Some important aspects to highlight
Long and dynamic camera movements, a successful production design by the renowned Samorapum Pakdeethai, admirable lighting work that successfully illuminates sets and uses chiaroscuro to denote melancholy and bring out the Thai capital in a pictorial way, depicted with genuine taste, are some of its achievements.
Apart from some technical and interpretive defects, the big problem with 'My Golden Blood' is that, on the one hand, it fails to distance itself from Hollywood standards and the general Anglo-Saxon canon, from Universal to Hammer Films; While on the other hand, it shows a clear intention to tell us that one man is better than another for being hypermasculine, heterosexual, an immaculate guardian of testosterone, and identified as white/Western, who is recognized for attributes such as attractiveness, handsomeness, sexy...
'My Golden Blood' is a series created to show some of the stereotypes of masculinity, especially those associated with the role of provider and being strong, competitive, rational, brave, inexpressive, dominant, independent... qualities that naturalize violent behavior, as well as to show off the mesomorphic bodies of Fluke and Joss Way-ar, but also to demonstrate the artistic talent of the two actors, and Fluke's warm and sweet voice as a singer.
In several scenes, especially those in which the character played by Joss can be seen half-naked, or in the one in which with a single movement of his finger a vampire leader stops an entire pack of hungry Dracula emulators ready to feed on golden blood, Ark Saroj Kunatanad worships orthodox masculinity, that social construct that evolves in response to social and cultural changes, and which, considered largely hegemonic, is evidenced in the dominance of men over women and other less powerful men.
In addition to violating the essence of BL and what distinguishes it from mainstream, white, Western, gay media, with his excessive worship of hegemony the Thai director deprives us as viewers of drawing our own conclusions, giving us a distorted view of this social phenomenon, widely exploited in Thai BL series, without taking into account that contemporary changes in masculinity have seen the emergence of new masculinities that challenge traditional male stereotypes.
In many ways, rather than showing sexual difference uncensored, ending down the stereotypes that often still surround queer characters, breaking with past hegemonic and ancestral conventions, reflecting the lives and experiences of LGBT+ people on screen, validating the identities, experiences, and emotions of members of this human collective, demonstrating that the love, struggles, and dreams of gay people are just as valid and important as those of anyone else, these kinds of politics, still present in many Thai boy-love dramas, take BL back to more reactionary than progressive places in the queer imaginary.
Although these aesthetic aspects manage to cloud the story, the series explores themes such as the loneliness that comes with immortality. Joss Way-ar Sangngern's Mark is a vampire with a soul. Sad and lonely, his mission to protect Tong has led him to distance himself from his fellow human beings, even those of his "own blood," in the universe of living beings.
In essence, what the Thai director does is simply take the aggiornada vampire imagery created by the British production company in the 1960s and... Add little else. In its low-budget gothic horror films, the studio behind 'Dracula' and 'The Curse of Frankenstein' had transformed vampires into ruthless beings with enormous sexual magnetism; And while the series shows some of these wild subjects who run to devour their victims as if they were zombies eager to eat brains, Ark castrated their malevolent intentions, turning one of its protagonists into a seductive, tragic, solitary and melancholic antihero..., eager to find true love.
It's a valid romantic vision, but here Ark repeats what has been exploited on other occasions: the protagonists of 'My Golden Blood' seem to have stepped out of a gay porn casting call, dripping not only with water when they emerge from a pool, but, above all, exuding sexuality and beauty, with one of them suffering from having to repress his wild instincts every time he is near the boy with the golden blood.
The main dilemma: the existential conflict between being human and being a vampire
As expected, Tong won't beg Mark to be transformed into a vampire and live immortality by his side. Which leads me to ask: how will the two of them live out their love affair? If Tong doesn't become a vampire, she'll die at some point, while Mark would be condemned, as he has been up to now, to a sad and lonely eternal survival without the person he loves.
If we were to follow the imagery of vampire films and TV shows to the present, the ideal scenario would be that Tong would be bitten by Mark, allowing them both to enjoy immortality. But as we all know, Tong cannot be bitten by a vampire and survive. In this context, the obvious questions arise: how could the two then manage to live together forever? How could the love between the two survive? How will they experience the existential conflict between being human and being a vampire, a conflict that Mark doesn't have and that, if necessary, will make him noticeably desperate for the human nature that Tong refuses to relinquish today and would find difficult to abandon tomorrow?
By drinking the golden blood, Mark has begun to react, feeling emotions and feelings that draw him closer to humans. Could this be the solution? The vampire transformed into a human being, going against everything established in the vampire myth to date? I find it very original, but then a new question arises: How could Mark maintain the physical strength, perception, power of willpower, hypnosis, intuition, transformation, summoning and control over animals, humans and other undead, and other characteristics that distinguish him as a vampire, necessary to carry out his mission of protecting Tong?
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