The Strain, Guillermo Del Toro’s new show on FX is not the stuff of normal vampire lore. In the classic Del Toro style, he completely takes the vampires we are all used to and replaces them with a much more terrifying and biologically believable beast.

In 2009 Del Toro partnered with writer Chuck Hogan to write a trilogy of books exploring a new type of vampire. The books respectively ended up being called, “The Strain,” “The Fall” and “The Eternal Night.” Each book delved deeper into a viral outbreak that caused people to turn into vampires.

This was a welcomed change of pace from all the “Twilight “ books that were being released at the time. These vampires weren’t heartbroken and didn’t sparkle; they were a virus whose only real purpose was to spread with no other agenda in sight.

Producer Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Del Toro have now taken The Strain to FX and built a vibrantly colored bit of ultra-violence to television that will reinvent the way we think about vampires.

Del Toro produces the series and directs the pilot episode. But, he made it clear he will stay actively involved as the series goes forward.

“I have made it a point to stay obsessively involved in supervising every single one of the effects, make-up effects, color correction, and I feel like this is our baby neither Chuck nor Carlton’s nor mine alone. It’s the three of us. It’s like “three men in and a baby” for vampires, and I feel like it would be essential to stay involved in that way.” Del Toro said.

The story follows Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) of the CDC and a group called the Canary Team who are rapid responders called in to diagnose potential biological outbreaks.

One night a passenger plane mysteriously stops on the runway and goes completely dark. Goodweather and his team go aboard to find almost everyone dead except for four survivors.

Added to this a mysterious hand-carved 9-foot-tall coffin is found in the cargo hold that contains something that could be the root of all the deaths on the plane and part of the bigger picture.

The Master (voiced by Lance Henriksen) is an ancient vampire who has survived the centuries by trading bodies out once they become too ravaged by the virus. He has come to New York with a plan to change the balance between Humans and Vampires and throw the world into a real horror show.

Much like Del Toro’s other films he takes a biologically feasible approach to his horror. In this case, he has thought out the lower vampires as well as the Master in great detail to create something that seems functional in the real world.

“The more they lose their humanity by losing their heart,” Del Toro said about the characters in his new show.

“Their heart is suffocated by a vampire’s heart and it overtakes the functions. It was important metaphorically to me because the beacon that leads these vampires to their victims is love. Love is what makes them see their victims, they go to see the people they love the most. So, they turn to the instinct that is most innately human to their feeding mechanism. Next, their digestive system is overtaken then their genitals fall off and their excretion system becomes simplified just like lower forms of life who feed on blood do. They excrete while they eat, which in the show comes with the splashes of ammonia-infused liquid that they expel while feeding. They lose their soft tissue like their ears and nose. And they develop a tracheal opening to vent the extra heat from their high metabolism. Del Toro Said. ”

“The Strain” feels very much like a film that is broken into pieces. It doesn’t feel episodic; it carries the same feeling of pushing pause on a film and picking it up again next week.

“We approached the making of the television show with a lot of the same things you do when you make a feature. We are incredibly grateful to FX for being so supportive and allowing us our process,” Carlton Cuse said, the show’s executive producer.

“The Strain” was created with a planned ending to stay away from the endless second act some shows with no end have.

“Part of finding a home for “The Strain” at FX was having an ending in mind and going in with a two-arc model,” Del Toro Said.

David Bradley masterfully takes on the role of Abraham Setrakian and quickly becomes a large part of the story playing a pawnshop owner who carries a hidden sword in his walking stick. Setrakian is the only one that truly knows what’s going on and tries to warn people but isn’t afraid to take things into his own hands.

“The Strain” has a very saturated look that mixes cyan and magenta together to help create a unique world. Del Toro had the color scheme expertly planned out even in terms of what certain colors would signify looking back.

“You will notice the color red in the show is connected with the vampires, every time you see red whether it’s a fire hydrant or a police siren you will know it is linked to vampires. So some of the characters that are going to turn in the pilot are coded to have a little bit of red. So in retrospect, you will realize they were linked to that world,” Del Toro said.

 

“The Strain” begins July 13 on FX.