By Kamran Pasha

I have been a professional filmmaker in Hollywood for nearly 25 years and have seen a lot of vampire stories. I’ve even written one myself. The genre has been a favorite of the industry since the silent film era, starting with Nosferatu in 1922, which remains one of the creepiest horror movies ever filmed. Starting with Max Schreck’s seminal performance as the terrifying Count Orlock in that film, the vampire genre has evolved in many ways. Bela Lugosi’s elegant Count Dracula led to the bloody Hammer films starring Christopher Lee to the tragic Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows to the teen girl’s romantic fantasy of sparkling vampires in Twilight. As a fan of the mythos, I thought I had seen it all.

Until I encountered Voltaic Blood by talented young writer-director (and personal friend) Jaime Gonzalez. Gonzalez does what I had imagined impossible – opened up a whole new way to think of vampire stories that takes us out of the known permutations of the genre into uncharted territory that manages to bring together the worlds of Steampunk Gothic and AI, with a dose of 1980s cool to reimagine the undead in a whole new way.

Gonzalez first approached me about this project 3 years ago. He had joined my Patreon and had signed on to become a consulting client to develop his skills as a screenwriter. His earliest scripts that I read showed an unusually sophisticated knowledge of history and religious themes (which are topics that make many professional filmmakers in Hollywood uncomfortable due to their general ignorance of both). But his scripts also had unique understanding of how those themes could be effectively explored using science fiction. His screenplays still needed work in terms of mastering the spine of story structure, which is my specialty, and Gonzalez was humble and self-aware enough to reach out for guidance on areas that he sensed he hadn’t mastered yet.

Over the next several years, I have served as friend and mentor to Gonzalez and have been impressed by his willingness to take notes and do the work to improve his craft. As a result of his diligence, he has rapidly begun to gain momentum on the independent film circuit. His screenplay I consulted on, Ashes to Ashes went on to win Best Sci-Fi Screenplay at the LA Film Awards in 2022.

And then Gonzalez approached me with his script for Voltaic Blood, a vampire series he wanted to create for television. I consulted on the script, which I found to have his usual in-depth knowledge of history and religious thought, but was also set in a cool science fiction environment that I hadn’t seen explored in this genre. A gritty world that was both futuristic and deeply tied to the past. I thought that a version of the show could actually end up on television eventually. But as someone who has worked in TV for nearly a quarter of a century. I knew that getting a TV show made without having extensive experience in that medium already was an almost impossible task.

But Gonzalez is not someone that accepts defeat easily, and he certainly doesn’t listen when anyone tells him it can’t be done. So, he confidently told me that he would film the script himself as proof-of-concept. I was skeptical. The script I read required heavy CGI to create the world it described with justice. It seemed an improbable task to me on an independent filmmaker’s budget. But I am not the kind of person to tell someone that their ambitions are too big (indeed I have been told that by others and have regularly proved them wrong). So, I wished him success in his goal. Over the next couple of years, Gonzalez kept me updated about his intent to finance, produce and direct the script, but I didn’t really expect his plans to come to fruition due to the difficulties I perceived in pulling off such a massive endeavor without studio backing.

And then earlier this year, Gonzalez shared with me that he had finished producing and editing the pilot episode of Voltaic Blood and was releasing the finished product on YouTube (see bellow).

To be honest, I was startled that he had actually pulled it off. And I was nervous that the production quality would be unlikely to match his vision and ambition as a filmmaker. So I clicked the link with some trepidation. And I was stunned to see that Jaime Gonzalez had exceeded my expectations and produced a visually stunning and cool show that seemed very much in line with the original script I had read years before.

Voltaic Blood is a vampire thriller set in a world we have never seen before, at least in this specific horror genre. It combines the futuristic dystopian cityscape of Blade Runner with the idea of human consciousness entering AI worlds explored in Tron and The Matrix. And it wraps up the whole present in a bow of 1980s coolness reminiscent of sleek shows of that decade such as Knight Rider. A unique universe that serves as the background to a tale of ancient vampires fulfilling dark blood oaths from centuries ago in the shadowy streets of this advanced metropolis.

The story follows two main characters – Gabriel Bathory, the scion of a royal European family who has been turned into a guilt-ridden vampire, and Michael Rakoczi, a young man haunted by a mysterious past as an orphan who was the sole survivor of Gabriel’s battle with a vampire hunter that might have been Michael’s mother. And Michael has a cool computerized Corvette with an AI (similar to KITT in the above-mentioned Knight Rider) that has been programmed to be his guardian since he was a baby. 

The story begins with the fight that leaves baby Michael orphaned. But after killing the woman that protected Michael, the bloodthirsty Gabriel sees that the baby wears an amulet that connects him to his own ancient lineage. Guilt stricken, Gabriel spares baby Michael and programs the Corvette to take him to an orphanage. We jump forward decades to Michael, now an adult, trying to find out the truth of his origins. In his efforts to uncover his past, Michael uses a virtual reality headset to enter Nyir-Net, an AI world where he connects with Valeria, a woman who could help him uncover his past. But he runs into trouble when a Netrunner, a Mr. Smith-esque policeman of this online world, comes after him. 

Michael is rescued by Gabriel, who has been secretly watching over him as a baby as penance for his own crimes as a vampire. But in coming to Michael’s aid, Gabriel reveals himself to the one woman who has been looking for him for centuries – the vampire queen Elizabeth Bathory (based on the infamous real-life Hungarian countess who bathed in the blood of virgin girls to preserve her beauty). Bathory wants to bring Gabriel back to the vampire family he has abandoned in repentance – or destroy him if he resists. Bathory dispatches her acolyte Nadia to hunt down Michael, and when Gabriel comes to rescue him from Nadia and her vampire goons, it leads to a final climactic battle where Gabriel is transformed into a surprising new kind of protector in line with the digital rules of this world. We are left wondering where the story will go in Episode 2 and beyond as Gabriel and Michael confront the ongoing threat from Elizabeth Bathory.

There is a lot more that happens in the 50-minute pilot that I could reveal, but the show is worthy of watching to get all the details and nuances. As an independently filmed pilot on a limited budget, Voltaic Blood does a remarkable job of creating cool visuals that elevate this episode. It is clear that Gonzales has deep confidence in his visual storytelling abilities. From a story standpoint, the first episode relies more on visual expression than dialogue to explain what is happening, which can be hit or miss. I had already read the original script and discussed the ideas with Gonzalez so I was able to follow along. I am not sure every viewer will be able to do so as easily, and it may require some mental effort for audience members to piece together the mythology. But I think that effort is worthwhile, as there is a sophisticated tale here that is intentionally cerebral and deserves unpacking by the viewer’s intellect.

There are still some areas for improvement, which is to be expected on a project of this scale being financed and produced independently. Most of the casting is spot on and the characters seem believable in their environments, but I felt the weakest moments of the show were when smaller characters such as the Netrunner get substantial screentime and don’t bring the same vibe as the leads. Also, while the musical score creates effective atmosphere, it sometimes drowns out the dialogue which is a technical issue I would advise Gonzalez to fix moving forward.

But overall, I am very proud of what Gonzalez has accomplished here. Voltaic Blood is an excellent independent production that transcends its financial limits with a confident vision that is unique, cool, and at times gripping. I am looking forward to seeing more episodes in this series and encourage you all to support the show. I believe my friend Jaime Gonzalez is destined to become a great filmmaker, and he is well on his way with Voltaic Blood.

Rating: 8/10

Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and novelist. You can work with him as a story consultant on your own creative projects by joining his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/kamranpasha/home

Voltaic Blood is now available for free on YouTube: