BLISS RATING: ★★★★★
“Love and fear represent two different lenses through which to view the world. Which I chose to use will determine what I think I see.” – Mariannne Williamson
I loved this series! And for someone who should stay away from horror films, I could not stop watching this one. Even though I am prone to night terrors from watching scary movies, I literally ‘binged’ watched this series as I was completely hooked. Of course, I paid the price. I woke up several nights in a row screaming from nightmares, but it was honestly worth it. Perhaps not to my husband who must wake me up from my night panics, however.
To be sure, this series was far from perfect, but it so grabbed my attention from the beginning and never lost it. Of course, the story got a little wonky, way too unnecessarily complicated, and so deep into the weeds in detail that I thought I would love my mind trying to figure out who was doing what to whom. But overall, what a ride!
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? It is a bit unusual for me to start out with this section so early in a review but there is one person who does need to be singled out. In all honesty, while this is an exceptionally well-acted series, there is one quite extraordinary. Barcode Tinnasit as Non is phenomenal. I could not keep my eyes off him and his ability to portray such a range of emotions as he did. Scarred, wounded, defeated, bullied, abused, tormented, beleaguered, and battered. How he even survived to the point that he did was nothing short of miraculous and tenacious. And through it all, he still tried to do the ‘right thing’; but no matter how hard he tried, he kept digging himself deeper and deeper into the pit of despair. Through all his misery, he still managed to find love. He loved Phee (Nannakun Pakapatpornpob). However, what he loved more was his integrity. Ironically, he had that all along; he just never saw it or believed he had it. He let all the others take it away from him. Barcodes’s acting is breathtaking in range and scope. From being hapless to maniacal, I completely believed him in every form he displayed. He honestly exhibited some of the finest and most intricate acting skills in a BL I have ever seen. For someone as young as he is (19), he is a force to be reckoned with. I felt his emotional ranges at every level he was in. He had a unique way of drawing you into his characterization and making you feel Non in all his rawness. Sure, he was not always proper or even honest, but he was always focused on making things justifiable, no matter what the cost or sacrifice to himself. Again, it is called integrity. He just did not know even with such a noble goal, you can be blinded to the other qualities in your life that are of equal value and sometimes are more important. Even at the end, his final words to himself were, “I’m gonna get out of this place. I am not a loser.”
This story is a classic story of haves against have-nots. The privileged against the disadvantaged. It is a story about a group of ‘friends’ who take advantage of one particular individual whose skills are something they lack but want. They bully, cajole, and manipulate him into thinking he could become one of ‘them’; but, of course, he never will. Being naïve, he still believes he can. The further he travels into their wile, the more the web of subterfuge around him envelopes him to the point that he is unable to escape its clutches. His life is doomed.
His so-called friends are all despicable. Some more than others but each of them in some way contributed to his life becoming a snake pit. While they laugh and smile and feel perhaps wounded at times but what he has supposedly done to them, their lives will continue. Non’s life, however, is nearly worthless, in shambles, and forgotten, even by the one who loves him.
The story is brilliantly written with an amazing screenplay. To be sure, it gets at times too much into the weeds with details, but each of the characters has a back story. While all are broken in some way and all had various degrees of traumas in their lives, none of that justified or excused their treatment of Non. Ironically all of them have some redemptive qualities. But the story is not about redemption. It is strictly about reality.
On the surface, their friendships seem solid. However, as they tried to recreate for their friend who is leaving to go overseas, the imagery of a few years ago in the same location where they made their movie, their world once again comes apart. But this time, they have been set-up in an elaborate scheme by Non’s brother, New (Mio Athens Werepatanakul) and his former lover, Phee. The aim for this set up was to find out what really happened to Non.
What happens to them, however, is that they deteriorate into madness from a combination of drugs combined with their own sense of guilt and perhaps karma. They might want to call it spirits or ghosts, but in reality, it is the forces within each of them that triggers them to see and hear what the truth is and their part in Non’s destruction. And that is what drives them towards fiendish tendencies and to commit their own murderous behaviors.
Non does not come back from the grave to exact revenge. It is their thinking that evokes them to that conclusion. It is their own weighted down guilt and sense of remorse that does it, plus the revenge of finding out what happened getting carried away.
The story is an astonishingly ugly one, awash with creatures who are unworthy of any of our sympathies, save Non. It is dark, evil, full of the arrogance and smugness of so many privileged people who think and act like they are better than others and have no qualms about using and abusing others for their own pleasures and needs. And sense of entitlement. Once used, they are discarded like old tissues.
Everything about this series is dark. The setting is dark. The cinematography is dark; way too dark. It was hard to see some of the action at times because more light was definitely needed in some of the scenes. The characters are awful. And yet there is no pleasure in their outcomes. It is not satisfying in the least. It all gives the impression of being so exasperating and in the end, nothing looked as if anything had been learned by anyone. It all seemed for naught.
This was a big risk to take a story like this and turn it into a BL. While the BL is not a major focus of the series, it does play a pivotal role in the story. Although it takes a ‘back seat’ to the dynamics of the backstories, it is present in the theatrics of some of the here-and-now situations of the action and is certainly used for heaping mental and emotional abuse upon others by those that can when beneficial. In the end, love did not save anyone. Reality was the great balancer but not necessarily the great equalizer. Some paid a heavier price for their transgressions than others. A few seemed to garner favor while still others were tormented to a living hell.
Or was any of it real?
The ending is stunningly creative and unexpected and had a feel that we were watching a version of a Grand Guignol theater. Perhaps, that is why I loved it so much. This is well-crafted, remarkably well-acted, with a bit too much detail in places, exceptionally dark perhaps too much so, yet overall so fascinating, gripping and captivating.
One of the best BLs for 2024 with a frightfully deep doleful story.
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