Harold's Reviews > The Strain

This is an action movie in the form of a book. You’ve seen it all before. The formula is simple and all the familiar elements are here. There is a threat. In this case vampires, although it can be anything - an epidemic, earth is going to be hit by an asteroid, terrorists, killer clowns etc etc. There is a hero and a sidekick aware of the threat but working for an agency too stupid to understand the depth and seriousness of the threat. Maybe the agency has been corrupted by the evildoers. In any event the hero and sidekick have to go rogue in order to survive and fight the threat. Introduce a bunch of expendable characters who are there solely to die and throw in a few sublplots involving divorce, custody battles and other day to day scenarios to fill things out and you essentially have it. The ending is predicitable and opens the door for the sequels (this is a trilogy). No surprises here. I wanted to read something light and this surpassed my wildest expectations. If I had days free this would have been done in a few hours.

I expected more. Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth was a great movie that worked on a number of levels. This is just cookie cutter formulaic disposable pop fiction.