Spoiler warning: Review covers events of first two episodes
The novel The Strain — and its follow-ups The Fall and The Night Eternal — had a highly cinematic feel to it. You could feel the creepiness emanating from the book’s opening scene, also the opener to the TV series that premiered last weekend on FX.
In a way, the problems with the TV series come from the source material.
The series takes place in New York City (though it was filmed in Toronto) and begins on an ominous note, as two flight staff notice something going horribly wrong. We then find out that a plane has landed at JFK Airport, with no signs of communication. The plane is completely dark.
Enter Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), an epidemiologist for the CDC who is currently tied up in a custody battle over his son Zack. Eph (as he asks people to call him) clearly cares about his son but is a little manipulative and always busy due to his work. Eph also has a complex relationship with his coworker, Nora (Mía Maestro).
There’s also Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley, best known as Walder Frey in Game of Thrones), an old man who seems to know more about the mysterious plane than anyone. Throw in Mexican gangbanger Gus (Miguel Gomez) and a pest control expert Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand) and you’ve got your good guys.
On the “dark side” there’s the man who seems to have orchestrated the dark plane, Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde), and the mysterious Thomas Eichorst (Richard Sammel).
The first episode, at 90 minutes, serves as an elaborate setup of the characters and circumstances. Eph and Nora explore the dark plane and find everyone on-board is dead, with no easily identifiable sign of what killed them all. When Eph and Nora switch to UV light they find a strange white substance covering the plane. The chief medical examiner later finds a slit in the necks of all the deceased.
And then four of the passengers wake up.
Later, Eph and Nora discover a large, nine-foot box filled with dirt, with a latch on the inside. No one seems to know where it came from, or why a box of dirt would need a latch. Meanwhile, Setrakian realizes what’s happening and tries to warn Eph — but can’t, as he is promptly arrested.
And then the box disappears from the airport — as arranged by Eichorst, who hires Gus to drive it out in a van in exchange for a large cash payment and a way of speeding up Gus’s mother’s immigration papers.
As we approach the end of the episode, the chief medical examiner gets a bloody surprise as the presumed-dead bodies begin walking and tear him to shreds.
The second episode introduces Fet, while expanding the character connections when Eichorst visits Setrakian in prison. Meanwhile, Eph is frustrated when the CDC loses jurisdiction over the plane case.
By the episode’s end, the shadowy Eldritch Palmer comes face-to-face with the creature that has created the vampire epidemic.
The book’s flaws, as mentioned, are in some ways the show’s flaws. The characters, with the exception of a few, are two-dimensional with little developed personality. Mía Maestro as Nora is dull, though the actress does her best. It’s just that Nora gets little to do in the books as well.
A few of the actors bring life into the characters. Stoll as Eph manages to hold the balance of his unlikeable and heroic sides, especially in one of the first few scenes as Eph is late for his custodial meeting with his wife and son. Bradley as Setrakian is a delight as a crochety but knowledgeable old man, and despite his brief screentime, Durand makes a great first impression as Fet.
The series will likely be difficult to sit through for those who haven’t read the books — the sequences with Gus and Fet are so removed from the action that viewers who don’t know the backstory might forget about them altogether. The second episode does little to rein in its separate storylines. There is the odd bit of horror — the vampires, once they finally start to attack, are creepy, as is the shadowy master of them all — but for the most part the series feels like a crime drama. Admittedly, the drama will ramp up, but for now, the series it taking a bit too long to set up the chessboard, so to speak.
One universally positive thing that can be said about the series is how pretty it looks. Del Toro has a masterful eye in colour combinations, from the blue-and-yellow plane exploration scene to the contrast of black and white when Eph and Nora visit the four “survivors” in the quarantine area.
So long as viewers are intrigued, this show could evolve into something thrilling. But until the characters and storylines become more connected, the series feels a tad anemic.
