The Strain: Three Things We Liked About Del Toro’s Vampire Tale, And Two We Didn’t
Del Toro's latest was a mixed bag.
When Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain premiered on FX in 2014, it finally gave us a look at one of our most anticipated shows of the year. Based on the trilogy of books by del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Strain actually began life as a TV series pitch by del Toro, but when he couldn’t get a network to pull the trigger on it, he went the novel route.
Then it came full circle back to the small screen with a creepy tale of a vampire plague that’s about to make everybody’s lives a lot more complicated.
There was a lot to like about The Strain, and assuming it builds upon those strengths in the weeks to come, it should make a great palliative for fans who are currently in Walking Dead withdrawals. It wasn’t without its flaws, however. Hit the link below to see our breakdown of three things we really liked about The Strain…and two things we kind of didn’t.
Good: The Dead Plane
By far the strongest element of The Strain pilot is the whole notion and execution of the “dead plane.”
We’re introduced to a passenger liner touching down in New York after a trip from Germany, but there’s a problem. There’s something big and scary tearing around in the cargo hold, and before long it he busts loose into the passenger compartment.
The next thing we know, the plane is sitting dead on the runway at JFK — no power, no movement, no signs of life, and all the window shades drawn but one. Oh, and the body of the plane is unnaturally cold. That can’t be good.
Soon enough CDC docs Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro) board the plane to find everyone seemingly dead — but it’s not that simple. The bodies aren’t entering rigor mortis, and there’s some sort of biological substance all over the cabin that only shows up in blacklight.
Before you can say “jump scare,” four of the passengers pop back to life. The Strain plane sequence is well orchestrated, and the notion of a “dead plane” felt especially unsettling in the aftermath of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a mystery that still hasn’t been solved. There were several other scenes that were aimed to be scary, but none of them topped the simplicity of that still, dark plane.
Bad: The Weird Mix of Science and Supernatural
I haven’t read the The Strain novels yet, so leading up to the show I was curious about the exact nature of del Toro and Hogan’s vampires. The posters and trailers were playing up the body horror with the freaky worms that serve as a vector for the vampire plague, but on the other hand there were elements that looked a lot more supernatural.
That dichotomy was only strengthened in the full The Strain pilot. Everything we see about how the plane’s passengers become the undead seems to be much more “disease” than “dark gift.” Badass pawnshop owner/presumed vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian (Harry Potter’s David Bradley) keeps a “pet” heart riddled with the vampire parasite worms in his home, and during the autopsy on the plane’s dead passengers, we see a cluster of the worms try to burrow into the medical examiner (right before the dead folks stand up and decide it’s chow time).
But then we have “the Master,” a creepy figure who reminds me a lot of the “Grim Reaper” ghost from Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners. He runs around in a big billowing cape. He flies (and lifts 500-pound coffins into the air).
He drains people’s blood with a projectile spike tongue and then smashes their heads into pudding for seemingly no good reason. He also has plenty of traditional vampire/Dracula iconography associated with him.
He rode to the States in a ridiculously ominous wooden casket filled with soil, he apparently is not a big fan of daylight (all those closed shades on the plane), and Abraham at one point tells Ephraim the vamped-up corpses need to be beheaded and burned.
It all makes for an odd The Strain fit with the more grounded and science-y take the rest of the episode sets up. I’m not saying these two approaches to vampire lore can’t co-exist, but they definitely feel like an awkward match in the pilot.
Good: Abraham Setrakian, Elder Badass
Every good vampire tale needs a vampire slayer, and The Strain looks to serve that up in the form of Abraham, played with aplomb by David Bradley, who we loved last year in the role of original Doctor Who actor William Hartnell in the An Adventure Through Space and Time TV movie.
Here, he’s a mysterious pawn shop owner who realizes the significance of the dead plane and sets out to warn the people in charge that bad things are a’coming unless they act quickly to stop them. He’s also saddled with the role of “Mr. Exposition,” but if you’ve got to have somebody on hand to explain what’s really going on to people who aren’t listening, you could certainly do worse than David Bradley.
Abraham’s The Strain introduction is also one of the best parts of the whole episode. A pair of thugs — including Weevil from Veronica Mars! — come in to hock an obviously stolen watch, and we’re told vampire expert Abraham pays good money for silver.
Abraham lowballs them for the watch, which pisses Weevil and his imposing comrade off, so when Abe turns his back, Weevil tries to grab a handful of money from the till. That ends with Weevil’s arm pinned at a painful angle and Abe pressing a knife against his brachial artery. Abe gets his cash back, plus a free gun from the other guy. Can we just make this whole show about Abraham?
Bad: Everybody But Abraham
Sure, The Strain character of Abraham hasn’t yet ventured far beyond stereotypical “wizened vampire hunter” tropes, but Bradley’s performance elevates the role such that we don’t really mind. I could happily watch a show that was nothing but Abe’s adventures dealing with unruly customers and dealing with the undead by night.
Instead, he’s just one player among many and by far the most interesting. Our main protagonist is the aforementioned CDC expert, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, who Netflix subscribers may recognize from House of Cards.
He’s basically kind of a dick, so it’s not surprising that his marriage is on the rocks. Any sympathy we might have for him is tossed out the window when we learn that, for all his apparent attempts to reconcile with his wife, he’s been sleeping with his CDC partner Nora on the side. He also completely dismisses Abraham’s warnings, in spite of the old man knowing numerous things he would have no way to know if he’s just some random loony.
The rest of the characters we’ve met so far are more placeholders than people at this point, but hopefully, that will change as the show continues. Sean Astin is playing against Samwise type as part of Eph’s CDC team who is — dun dun dunnnn! — doing the bidding of the bad guys (although he insists that he’s “done” once he helps a van containing the Master’s coffin to get past the security cordon).
And The Strain bad guys themselves are generically ominous, including an elder bastard who’s helping sneak the Master into Manhattan in exchange for eternal life, and his cohort, who is a pair of lightning bolts and some goose-stepping short of being a supporting character from Downfall.
I did like the rock star plane passenger who’s all gothed up in a way that seems to be an obvious parody of the Anne Rice school of vampirism, but that fondness died out once he opened his mouth and started talking.
Good: A New Breed of Vampire
With The Strain serving as a head-on collision between two different types of vampire story — the scientific and the supernatural — the scientific side of things is definitely the more intriguing at this point. The idea of vampirism being carried by parasites is a nice twist on the classic idea of a bite turning you, and our instinctive revulsion at the thought of parasitic infection should provide plenty of opportunity for squirm-inducing moments.
The whole prehensile tongue thing is also a huge departure from the comparatively tame vampire tradition of a love bite and a pair of dainty puncture marks. And as the show continues, we should get to see just how horrifying the evolution from human to vampire is in the Strain-verse. Lestat these guys are not.
It’s also nice to see somebody trying to make vampires genuinely frightening again. The romanticized vampire has been done to death in recent years, courtesy of things like True Blood and Twilight, so it’s long past time for the bloodsuckers to be presented as something that no one in their right mind would want to encounter, much less aspire to be.
The last thing I can recall that did a good job of presenting vampires as unsympathetic alpha predators was 30 Days of Night, so I’m looking forward to watching del Toro’s vision unfold in the weeks to come.
