The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

And you thought the CDC had its hands full with ebola. . .

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 6, 2014

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but most people don’t want unexpected projectiles smashing through their windows, which may be a subliminal reason the cover image for the new Blu-ray release of The Strain is so instantly disturbing. In a perhaps unintentional riff on a similar idea exploited in the 1981 Aussie horror entry Dead Kids, a parasitic worm is seen boring into a stretched wide open eyeball. However, considering some of the talent involved in this series and their knowledge of all sorts of horror entries that have gone before, that disquieting image may indeed be a throwback to previous outings, for The Strain is a fervid stew of a wide gamut of B-movie tropes and The X Files supernaturalism, combined (rather oddly, it might seem at first) with more of a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation procedural approach to what turns out to be one of the hoariest ideas in the entire horror canon: vampires. That’s not as much of a spoiler as might be assumed, for it’s patently obvious by the end of The Strain’s first episode that tony New York City is about to be a “ground zero” of a different, if no less calamitous, kind, where an outbreak of vampirism is at the center of a global conspiracy that has stretched back at least for several decades, to the World War II era. The Strain is the product of the fevered imaginations of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, who brought the concept out in book form in 2009 after a proposed television series couldn’t find an acceptable buyer. Del Toro and Hogan followed up The Strain with two sequels, The Fall and The Night Eternal, crafting a convoluted story that combined long treasured tropes in the vampire canon with a new post-modern twist. The series begins with a sequence that is fairly reminiscent of the sort of thing that used to crop up on The X Files (or even its modern day counterpart, Fringe), where an airliner lands at JFK but immediately shuts down on the runway, with its lights off, all but one of its window blinds closed, and absolutely no contact forthcoming from anyone on board. Fearing the worst, a whole slew of various alphabet soup agencies are called in to investigate, including the FBI and the CDC. It’s CDC investigator Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll, House of Cards: The Complete First Season) who becomes the heroic focus of the series, as he investigates what he initially believes is a “simple” case of a deadly contagion, but what he ultimately comes to understand is something decidedly more sinister.

For all the literary conceits that del Toro routinely inserts in his films, The Strain probably owes as much to pulp fiction as to more urbane writers like Bram Stoker or even (heaven forfend) Stephen King. There’s a lot of frankly derivative material here, like the pawnbroker survivor of the Holocaust (shades of Sidney Lumet), that is often played in a hyperbolic, graphic novel ambience. That might seem to be a problem, given the series’ “just the facts, ma’am” procedural angle, but perhaps surprisingly, The Strain manages to work these tonally disparate elements into a unique and mostly satisfying whole.

However, like a lot of pulpy fiction, The Strain is stuffed to its gills with what can sometimes feel like extraneous material. This includes a rather large cast, which includes Eph’s co-worker and romantic interest Dr. Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro); his estranged wife, Kelly (Natalie Brown); his son with Kelly, Zach (Ben Hyland); another co-worker named Jim Kent (Sean Astin), whose baby face may occlude a bit of subterfuge; Professor Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), that aforementioned pawnbroker who (of course) knows a thing or two about vampires and vampire hunting; Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde), one of the richest men in the world who is behind the mysterious appearance of the main vampire; and Thomas Eichorst (Richard Sammel), Palmer’s enforcer and a man with a long history with Setrakian as well. The Strain is marginally clunky in its first few episodes in laying out all of these interrelated characters, but once the pieces are firmly in place, the narrative becomes increasingly interesting and in at least a couple of twists, relatively unexpected.

The Strain has some perhaps unexpected “relevance” of its own, what with the recent hysteria surrounding the ebola crisis. It’s probably an unfortunate irony that the series casts the CDC as the putative heroes of the plot (with maybe an exception or two), just when the agency finds itself embattled in real life over its handling of the ebola crisis. But as fanciful as The Strain’s underlying premise is, the bureaucratic labyrinth that is on display throughout the first season as Eph attempts to understand what’s going on within the strictures and guidelines of his agency provides quite a bit of the angst The Strain generates, even aside from its sometimes spectacularly gruesome special effects.

The Strain may be a bit overheated for its own good in its first season, trying to stuff too many characters and interrelated plot threads to keep its central mythology fully alive. The soap operatic aspects of Eph’s life with his (supposedly) soon to be ex-wife and precocious son are especially problematic, not necessarily for any intrinsic failures, but more for how they’re so shamelessly woven into the vampire threat in an overly manipulative way. That said, with Lost’s Carlton Cuse also involved as an Executive Producer and showrunner, it’s probably best not to completely prejudge this similarly dense series before it has a chance to fully extend its vampiric wings.

The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Strain is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Shot digitally with the Red Epic, The Strain looks very sharp and well detailed in high definition, something that's especially commendable given how dark much of the series is. Whole sequences can take place in dimly lit environments, but more often than not, shadow detail is quite good and even fine detail can pop surprisingly well in close-ups. Some scenes are (of course) color graded, with the ever popular blue and yellow tints added, at times diminishing detail just slightly. When not overly color graded, the palette here is appealingly natural, with a wide array of hues and good saturation. The CGI is generally very well done, though the series cheats a bit on detailing "The Master" (the main vampire). Strangely, a couple of the practical effects, including things like a vampire "corpse" with a skull planed back to reveal its brain as part of an autopsy, look patently rubberized and fake. Despite the overall darkness of much of the series, there are no real issues with noise or other compression artifacts.

The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Strain's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix makes good, consistent use of the surround channels to envelop the listener in the supposedly mundane goings on of things like an airline landing or simply the noisy office maneuverings of a government bureaucracy. Dialogue is very cleanly presented and is well prioritized in the mix. There are some startle effects sprinkled throughout various episodes that make good use of LFE. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is rather wide for such a talky series.

The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One:

• In the Beginning (1080p; 14:11) gives an overview of some of the show's major plot components and characters, and includes interviews with many of the principal cast and crew.

Disc Two:

• A Novel Approach (1080p; 9:38) features Guillermo del Toro discussing some of the inspirations for the original book version of The Strain.

Disc Three:

• Setrakian's Lair (1080p; 9:47) presents David Bradley, who plays Setrakian, providing a tour of the "Batcave" like lair of the character.

The Strain: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Strain takes a while to really build significant momentum, and even then there are occasional clunky, overly contrived, moments. But it's obvious that the series has larger ambitions than merely offering yet another vampire saga. By the end of the first season, the major characters are very well established, and there are some fascinating backstories that have unfolded, providing a perhaps unexpected amount of emotional depth. It's going to be very interesting to see where The Strain chooses to go for its second season. Hopefully, the series won't suffer from (in the words of an old time ad) iron poor blood. Technical merits on this Blu-ray set are excellent, and The Strain comes Recommended.