The Strain Season 1 Episode 1 “Night Zero” Review

Written by: Paula Limbaugh Sooo, how many of you guys watched this Sunday night?  I hope you all did, as this definitely has some great potential to be a block-buster runaway!!   The TV series is based on the book by same title written by Guillermo del Toro in 2009, which Guillermo had originally intended for television.   Unable to sell the story to television he teamed with Chuck Hogan to write a series of books that became a trilogy.  Lucky for us someone had a change of heart.  With both Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, along with Carlton Cuse as producers, I don’t see how anything can go wrong with this series.

Enough of the background let’s get to the show!  So far we have this creepy ass dude that has just arrived from Germany via airplane unbeknownst to anyone.  This dude is not the vampire we have been accustomed to seeing, tall, pale and handsome, oh no, he is totally gruesome. We won’t be seeing any of the romanticized versions of vampires in these episodes.  This is pure blood and gore.  If you read any of the books you know that these vampires have a stinger like appendage that latches on and feeds off its prey.   The prey then become infected by worms that create a virus, ergo “the strain.”

The flight that our vampire has arrived on has landed at JFK with no lights, no communications.  The CDC becomes involved and a team led by Dr. Goodweather boards the plane only to find the passengers dead in their seats.  At the same time those checking out the cargo hold find a 9’ coffin filled with dirt and no record of it being aboard the plane.  And so the mystery begins!

A lot of great special effects, I especially loved the vampire feeding in the airport as he was making his way out.  The scenes in the plane with the CDC team investigating are quite eerie.  Ooh and the morgue, Hee Hee Hee!  CREEPY!  I can’t wait until next week to see what it will bring!  Tune in to FX on Sunday!