If you’ve been following director-writer Guillermo del Toro, you know him as the horror master behind "The Shape of Water," "Pan’s Labyrinth," "Nightmare Alley" and the recent "Frankenstein," which is earning accolades this awards season. His work is defined by richly imagined worlds, tragic monstersand a fascination with creatures lurking just beneath the surface of everyday life.
That imaginative streak has also spilled into comic-book TV adaptations like "Hellboy," but del Toro’s most unsettling creatures tend to appear when he’s free to fully reshape mythology on his own terms. Few projects demonstrate that better than "The Strain," a series that takes one of horror’s most familiar monsters and makes it feel alien again.
Adapted in 2014 from a book trilogy del Toro co-wrote with Chuck Hogan, "The Strain" is a four-season horror series set in a New York City slowly overtaken by vampires. It remains one of the most underrated genre shows of the past decade and one of the boldest reinterpretations of vampire lore ever put on television.
The era of a new kind of vampire
"The Strain" opens with an instantly chilling image: a Boeing 777 lands at JFK with everyone onboard dead — except for four passengers. CDC epidemiologist Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) is called in to investigate, soon joined by Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), a Holocaust survivor and pawnbroker who has spent decades hunting an ancient vampire leader.
What initially appears to be a viral outbreak quickly reveals itself as something far worse. A Master vampire hasn’t killed these passengers; he’s turned them. These creatures don’t seduce or stalk in the shadows. They attack using long, parasitic tongues that shoot from their mouths to latch onto victims’ faces or necks, transforming humans into nothing more than food.
Commanding them all is the Master himself, whose towering presence and nightmarish design rank among the most frightening creatures del Toro has ever created.
Monsters, mood and relentless dread
As the series progresses, Goodweather and Setrakian hunt for a weapon capable of stopping the vampires while deciphering an ancient tome that may hold the key to defeating the growing horde. The creature design echoes del Toro’s earlier work — "Pan’s Labyrinth" fans will recognize familiar DNA — but strips away the romance traditionally associated with vampires in favor of something cold, clinical, and predatory.
That approach creates a constant sense of dread, heightened by moody lighting and shadow-heavy environments filmed in Toronto. The writing is strongest in the early seasons but consistently grounds the horror in character-driven stakes. The series also finds room for dark humor through Fet (Kevin Durand), a wisecracking rat exterminator whose knowledge of New York’s sewers and forgotten infrastructure becomes a crucial advantage for the resistance.
If "The Strain" leaves you with any lasting image, it’s the vampires themselves — especially those grotesque tongues snapping outward in moments of sudden violence. Each season escalates the tension, introducing new allies and deadlier threats. While some performances, particularly from younger actors, can feel heavy-handed, those missteps are easy to forgive when weighed against the inventive monster design, intense action, and story twists that feel more daring than cliché.
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