While Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has become a vastly recognizable artist across several mediums (with his name gracing novels, films, FX’s The Strain, and even aborted video games), there is certainly one particular piece of his that has gained him respect and favor throughout the industry: Pan’s Labyrinth. The 2006 dark fantasy film was…
I’ve been speaking about the Gothic as a literary and media genre online and at conventions since the first Gothic novel of my Strangely Beautiful series was published in 2009, albeit during a bit of a lull in the oft-beleaguered genre’s cycles of waxing and waning popularity. I’ve been a diehard fan of the genre…
When we last saw Dr. Eph Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his rag-tag team of vampire hunters — young son Zach (Max Charles), lover and fellow CDC coworker Dr. Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro), vampire expert and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), exterminator Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand), and hacker Dutch (Ruta Gedmintas) — things weren't looking…
Don’t look now, but Halloween is just around the corner, and with it comes the one time each year where our morbid obsession with all things scary is celebrated! If you’re looking to get that heart rate thumping, look no further; here are the links that will send even the biggest adrenaline junkie running for…
Looking particularly well following the Master’s visit in last week’s installment, Eldritch Palmer pays a visit to Abraham’s pawn shop. He views everything with a proprietary air, of course; he’s the sort of asshole who sees the entire world as his own personal toy. It’s a disgusting little underscore on how Palmer believes himself to…
So we’ve finally reached the penultimate episode—“Last Rites”—and it’s hard to believe that while it’s been weeks for us, barely a week has passed for the characters. It’s also difficult to believe that this show can get even more tragic than it’s already been. But here we are. (I move that Abraham has had the…
As a horror series, The Strain has had plenty of tense, disgusting, and squirm-inducing moments. Lots of body horror. Some close calls and near misses. We’ve watched likable characters become infected, die, or transform into the undead. But for all of the cringing and shock factor scenes, I had yet to be properly frightened. I…
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, and New York, all lay claim to Edgar Allan Poe, but Boston had him first. He was born there in 1809 and he published “The Tell-tale Heart” there in 1843, shortly before he started publicly feuding with the Boston literary establishment in general—and with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in particular. “The Bostonians have…
Flashbacks aren’t new to this show, but this week’s episode handles them a little bit differently. Rather than giving us insight into a character’s origins, as in the Abraham and Eichorst narratives, we swing back and forth between the recent past and the present to see exactly what happened to Eph’s estranged wife Kelly. I…
Sean Astin has never been into vampires. “When I was sixteen I worked in a movie theatre where my friend Corey Feldman’s movie The Lost Boys premiered—that was probably the height of my vampire interest,” Astin says with a laugh. While the world was swept up in the vampire craze—with True Blood and The Vampire…
