SNAPSHOT
A plane lands at John F. Kennedy International Airport with the lights off and the doors sealed. CDC epidemiologist Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), Dr. Nora Martinez, and their team are sent to investigate. On board they find 206 corpses (with no mark of blood loss) and four survivors. The situation deteriorates when all the bodies disappear from the morgue. Goodweather and a small group of helpers find themselves battling to protect not only their own loved ones, but the entire city, from an ancient threat to humanity. (original series synopsis via Wikipedia)
You know how everybody complains long and hard, and for very good reason, about how they hate it when their home is invaded by cockroaches or some other kind of unnervingly multitudinous creepy-crawley?
As you listen to them, all you can think about is how skin-crawlingly awful it would be to have those creatures running around your own home helter-skelter in numbers unknown and unseen, near powerless to do much about them.
Now multiply that ick factor by a factor of say a gazillion and you have some idea how freaking creepy Manhattan must be at the start of the second season of Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain when the strigoi (vampires) that started surging over New York City throughout season 1 at the behest of an ancient undead nightmarish creature called The Master (and ghoulishly preserved second-in-command Eichhorst played by Richard Sammel) are well and truly entrenched.
Yes there is an exterminator by the name of Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand) on hand, not to mention two Centre for Disease Control doctors Dr. Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and Dr. Nora Martinez (Mía Maestro) and an old man who has dedicated his life to eradicating the evil scourge Professor Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley) but even with their expertise, grit and bravery, stopping The Master’s hordes looks increasingly like it might be a lost cause.
But wait! What kind of defeatist talk is that?
It’s like accepting that cockroaches are going to inherit your home and you’ll be the one scurrying out of their way while they do their worst.
It’s an idea completely unacceptable not just to the human inhabitants of New York City, those that are left anyway – one intrepid city councilwoman played by newcomer to the show Samantha Mathis declares “We’re going to take back this island one block at a time” – but also to The Master’s equally ancient foes, “good” strigoi (well they don’t feed on humans or seek to transform them so that’s a plus) who made their presence well and truly felt in season 1.
As season 2 opens what you effectively have is war underway for the very soul of humanity and it’s even bet which way it will go in a series that demonstrated time and again that it won’t flinch from showing the full horror of the strigoi threat as well as the not always ideal way humanity reacts to it.
It is horror writ large and it’s back this summer to frighten the bejesus out of you.