“The Strain”, it would appear, was a puzzling
labour of love for director/writer Guillermo del Toro. In 2006 he put the idea
for a vampire TV series to producers, but it wasn’t picked up. Not to be
deterred, del Toro recruited Chuck Hogan, an author with a strong orientation
towards screenplay writing, to write a trilogy of novels. I confess to not
having read the novels or much into the background of The Strain prior to watching the TV series. I am currently watching
the second season, neatly based on the second novel. The third season is out
next year, which might only take in half the final part. Del Toro believes that
two seasons would do the third novel the most justice, but he is also open to
divergences for the benefit of a successful adaptation. One cannot help but
read that as his hope to keep the franchise going as long as possible.
Plot:
Dr Ephraim
"Eph" Goodweather (Corey Stoll) of the Center [US sp.] for Disease
Control and Prevention is pulled away from a mediation meeting with his wife (Natalie
Brown) and son (Ben Hyland) to attend to an emergency investigation into a
Boesing 747. With everyone save four passengers dead on board yet with no
obvious signs of violence, it is suspected that a virus might be a cause.
Meanwhile, pawn shop owner, retired history teacher and Jewish holocaust
survivor, Professor Abraham Setrakiaheld (David Bradley) sees the danger and
tries to warn Goodweather along with his colleague and former lover, Dr Nora
Martinez (Mía Maestro), of the impending disaster. Little do they any of them know,
billionaire Eldrich Palmer (Jonathan Hyde) and Augustin "Gus"
Elizalde (Miguel Gomez), a Mexican gang member just released from juvenile
prison, have been engaged by the sinister Thomas Eichhorst (Richard Sammel) to
ensure the virus and plane’s most important cargo, the entombed undead body of
a powerful vampire get out…
Review:
“The Strain” is undoubtedly more in del Toro’s
commercialised US action mode than in his Mexican dark fantasy. You can love Pan’s Labyrinth with ease without
feeling a thing for this series. When I first read about del Toro’s involvement
with this project I saw the title “executive producer” and wrongly assumed he
had little actual involvement with the project. Think Tarantino or Spielberg’s
names attached to works that have the most tenuous connections to their usual
projects. As it turns out del Toro wrote and directed the pilot episode and has
regularly worked on the series whenever his busy schedule has allowed. We often
assume that artists of a high calibre begrudgingly do commercial work to pay
the house bills. This is not always the case. My guess here is that del Toro
originally wanted to pre-empt True Blood by
two years in giving us an 18 certificate ongoing vampire serial.
Treading the
well-worn and proven apocalypse plot style best exemplified by The Walking Dead, we follow the
adventures of a gang of dysfunctional vampire hunters and their opponents, a
legion of vampires headed by The Master and his two lieutenants, a business
mogul hungry for immortality and a vampire Nazi. The story takes us from the
fruitless attempts to contain the virus by two biologists and a lone vampire
hunter to the ongoing struggle by their assembled team to thwart the spread of
the virus. All of this drama is laced with various internal politics on both
sides. Before the first season is out, sub-divisions are revealed that
complicate the war further.
This is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with an 18
certificate, featuring vampires that are clear stylistic variations on the Predator/Alien inspired Reaper vampires
of del Toro’s “Blade II”. These
vampires are in the mould of Nosferatu’s Count
Orlok, as were the reapers. With one of the vampire hunters being the city’s
pest control man who first spots the emergence of the monsters in the sewers by
the behaviour of the rats, the look of the vampires might not be the only nod
towards the 1922 silent masterpiece.
After a very
promising two hour pilot that did a great job in building tension and
introducing an interesting cast of characters, the series descends into science
fiction vampire clichés. As the title suggests, “The Strain” deals with vampirism as if it were an actual biological
virus. However, we swiftly discover that this is so much camouflage. Del Toro
deals with surreal and supernatural material, and no amount of self-awareness
of the illogicality of the vampires being voiced by the story’s resident virus
expert is going to distract the viewer from that point. The series attempts to
further distance itself from its vampire trappings a little by having them
occasionally referred to as strigoi. The strigoi were the traditional names
Romanians gave to vampires. Romania, because of its association with Bram
Stoker’s famous creation, is the country most often linked to vampires.
Unfortunately using the old strigoi title for del Toro’s particular brand of
vampire is far from original. There have been examples of the name being used within
vampire fiction up to the present time. There is even a 2009 movie using the
name as its title.
The Master
character, in name and appearance, appears to be a rather lazy steal from both Buffy and Salem’s Lot. Unfortunately the special effects for this character,
once he is revealed, don’t mitigate this felony. For this first season he looks
a giant evil muppet, which might be spooky in the context of – well, “The Muppets”, but it doesn’t fit in with
the high visceral gore and body horror on display. Only a Peter Jackson
comic-horror like Brain Dead can get
away with that sort of thing.
The looks,
noises and behaviour of most of the vampires are in line with the flavour of
adrenalized vampires, zombies and other monsters we have seen in the past 20
years. They can be killed by UV, which echoes “Blade” and several other more sci-fi themed vampire franchises, but
has its roots in “Nosferatu” where
death-by-sunlight was first introduced into vampire fictions. The traditional
use of silver against vampires is retained as a weakness. However, being
impaled through the heart has been done away with. Instead the story keeps to
decapitations as the method of killing a vampire. Actually, cutting the head off
is overkill in this franchise. Del Toro and Hogan decided they would skip over
to George Romero’s vampire-related zombie camp of ideas and steal the “kill the
brain” idea for their brand of vampire. Indeed, save for a select elite
minority, the vampires behave a lot like zombie drones.
The series
relies a lot on deux ex machina and sheer luck for the vampire hunters,
especially when they seem to bungle so much. All the team members make regular stupid
mistakes in order to further the convoluted plot. Frequent attempts are made to
split them off to meander into subplot journeys, which I cannot help but assume
is inspired by the success of “Game of Thrones”. Expect to see a lot of ongoing
series attempt this strategy and fail by diluting the essence of the story.
“The Strain” damages its fragile suspension of disbelief by the very silly
excuses often made all the cast members when they decide to go off alone into
the vampire apocalypse, often going on ridiculously risky missions.
I can
appreciate the value of the latter. It has echoes of the “V” franchise in this
respect and the internal politics of the drama is one of the show’s most
appealing features. None of the team has any military training or combat
experience save for Professor Abraham Setrakiaheld (yes, the wizened vampire
hunter leader is called Abraham!) who has learnt through his lengthy time
fighting the strigoi. The in-fighting, egos and strained external loyalties
understandably compromise the team’s ability and I think we can all buy that.
However, this is often inconsistent with the remarkable killing abilities they
all seem quickly acquire when facing armies of vampires. Having been able to
handle multiple bloodsuckers in hand-to-hand combat and deftly manage a variety
of firearms, the team suddenly become total losers when it comes to devising
certain escape strategies. The other irritation here is the inconsistent threat
of the vampires. Within the first few episodes we see how incredibly easy it is
to be infected by a vampire. A single worm only has to land on your skin for it
to quickly burrow in and doom you to servitude under The Master. Each vampire
is loaded with these ever-multiplying vectors of evil. Yet the team and many
others happily wade in with swords, knives and clubbing weapons without so much
of quick check afterwards to if any of the worms has attached itself to an item
of clothing.
“The Strain”
has a competent cast, including regular cult TV actors like Kevin Durand
working on familiar territory and former hip-hop artist, Miguel Gomez, does
well to uphold the strong parallel sub-plot. Mía Maestro also deserves a
mention in a role that seems to be constantly playing second fiddle to Corey
Stoll’s and could have been provided with more expansion. As a result her
performance is very sympathetic and almost cruelly treated by the events that
transpire. David Bradley gets his opportunity to shine and this alone is good
reason to give the show a fair viewing. Having risen from playing creepy
characters in the “Harry Potter” series of films, the first season of
“Broadchurch” and “Game of Thrones”, the award-winning Shakespearean actor
overshadows lead actor, Corey Stoll, throughout the series.
I don’t wish
to diminish Stoll’s performance too much, but I have trouble feeling sympathy
for his complex character. Eph comes in as an ego-driven control freak of a
genius who is bonded to his career. Nevertheless, his work is driven by
humanitarian altruism and he garners affection around him. He has a good
relationship with his son, but due to his huge flaws his marriage is over. Much
of the story’s sub-plots are dominated by ongoing problems with his wife and
child, and his loyal work colleagues, including his relationship with Dr Nora
Martinez, which take on a much more complex dimension once the vampire war
breaks out. He is the typical male hero and intended sympathetic lead, but is
less interesting than the equally complex Dutch Velders played by Ruta
Gedmintas who gets far less screen time. Gedmintas conveys a lot of humanness in
her character that redeems a lot of the storyline’s absurdities.
The Master
might be at the centre of the struggle but the main badness is provided by his
two decidedly different lieutenants. Jonathan Hyde’s Eldrich Palmer is
reminiscent of a rather hammy, more vulnerable and less intelligent version of Ian
Richardson’s Francis Urquhart from the UK’s original “House of Cards”. Richard
Sammel’s Thomas Eichhorst also plays melodrama as a stereotypical Klaus Kinski
Nazi villain, but his go-for-broke tactic in acting provides a more enjoyable
performance. Sammel does spite very well and his exchanges with both Hyde and
Bradley’s characters are always memorable.
If you are
looking for a truly original entry into the vampire genre, I direct you towards
Neil Jordan’s criminally under-rated “Byzantium”. However, I would urge you do
this before watching season five of “American Horror Story”, “Hotel”, as this
has clearly stolen and bastardised Byzantium’s unique interpretation of the
character. That being said, “The Strain” is entertaining and compelling viewing
with relatively high production values if you can get over the ineptitude of
the vampire hunters.
Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com
