And the vampire pendulum swings back to another extreme: vile, wretched, diseased and genocidal. The FX channel is due to air The Strain this July based on a trilogy written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan: The Strain (2009), The Fall (2010), and Night Eternal (2011).

A year ago my brother highly recommended The Strain to me: “They have an interesting interpretation of vampire physiology, it’s based upon blood parasites that re-animate the host post-mortem.” At core, vampires are parasites emblematic of disease, exploitation and morbidity; in that capacity, they function as powerful metaphors for capitalism and global colonization. Hollywood exploits the parasite genre casting alluring vampires into commanding psychosexual fantasies where audiences play out subliminal vignettes featuring mass murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia. 

The Motley Crew: The Strain

The vampires portrayed in The Strain are similar in design to the type represented in F. W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu (1922): bald, translucent skin, daylight averse, coffins filled with native soil, immortal, psychic powers, insatiable appetite for human blood. The vampires in The Strain are truly repulsive to behold, resembling the crossing of a leech, a rat, a vampire bat and a bowl of maggots. Can vile vampires be profitable in the wake of twilight?

The book series starts at JFK International Airport where a Boeing 777 airliner has successfully landed and taxied off the runway, but has mysteriously shut down all external communication. Is this a terrorist attack, or something else? This ambiguity clearly plays to the primal fears of America post-9/11, and sets up the larger stakes of the invasion scenario.

Onboard the plane is “The Master,” an ancient vampire hell bent on creating yet another empire built on blood. Towards that goal, he enlists a billionaire Wall Street financier Eldritch Palmer who arranges his passage across the Atlantic. In return, he expects to sell his soul for vampire immortality, while simultaneously selling out all of humanity as parasitic livestock.

Tongue-tied: The Strain

Specialist Dr. Ephraim Goodweather from the Center for Disease Control is sent in to ascertain if there is a pathogenic cause for the communication blackout. He boards the plane but everyone is already dead. But not all stay that way; a chosen elite has been turned into vampire drones that rise from the dead to do the master’s bidding.

Dr. Goodweather joins forces with Professor Abraham Setrakian, an elderly pawn broker in Harlem and survivor of the Treblinka extermination camp in WW II.  That’s where he first encountered “The Master” feeding off Jewish prisoners like a barbaric diner at a ghoulish buffet. The Holocaust is the central blueprint for the storyline, and dead bodies pile up like grim kindling. In a climactic moment, “The Master” detonates an atomic bomb in Manhattan to choke the sky with ash turning day into vampire-friendly night so they can expand their global assault around the clock. A bleak mirror to current horror trends in American entertainment bloated with undead narratives featuring vampires, zombies  and demons with no end in sight.