Sometimes
while watching thrillers I find myself starting to be unsatisfied with what I’m
seeing. I’ll wonder to myself, “Why do I feel like the movie (or television
episode) needs to give me more? I’m really enjoying it. I’m interested in it. I’m
not bored by it. It’s well directed. It’s well acted. It’s well written.”
Whatever I’m watching has to be well directed, acted, and written for all of
that to work, so it’s movies or television episodes that I do feel are well
directed, acted and written that I’m finding really entertaining that I also
think have something missing that I think this in. I’ve recently realized that
these thrillers are just lacking thrills. It’s well done and I’m enjoying it,
but it’s just not having enough thrills. I’m not saying that I felt this way
throughout this entire episode, but I did feel that way for the first half.
In this
episode of The Strain, the “surviving”
passengers on the airplane start to get even stranger and more disgusting and
disturbing symptoms, Ephraim (Corey Stoll) goes to the custody hearing, and
Abraham (David Bradley) gets released from jail and starts his plan to stop the
spread of the disease. When Ephraim is done with his person business, he joins Nora
(Mia Mastro) to find out what disease is in Captain Redfern (Jonathan Potts)
and hopefully get rid of it. While Ephraim is at the custody hearing, Nora meets
up with Abraham to find out what he thinks they have to do to stop the disease.
Jim Kent (Sean Astin) meets up with somebody he made a deal with to find out
what’s going on.
As I have already
said, for the first half of this episode I was very interested in what was going
on. I was not bored by the show. I didn’t find it dull. I just felt that something
was missing. The episode needed more thrills. Thankfully, the second half is
full of scares, thrills, and disturbing things. The first half is some character
development. I was very interested in what was going to happen at the custody
hearing, and what did happen boosted the episode. It had me feeling pity for the
main character, but also feeling that he may not be right, which is always good
for the main character. He is not a perfect human that is always treated poorly
by everyone; he’s wrong once in a while. As far as the character development
with Nora, we don’t learn anything, but the plot was progressed in her scene
with Abraham.
We also
learn a bit more about Vaslily Fet (Kevin Durand), who I didn’t realize would
become a main character. When he inspects what rat bit someone’s child on the
face, he find out the rats are running away, scared of something. This plot
point doesn’t seem crucial to the series, but it was interesting to me. I don’t
whether Vaslily will remain a main character for future episodes, but I hope
his storyline doesn’t become too big if he does.
In my
reviews of the first two episodes of this season, I commented on how well
directed I thought they both were, even though they were done by different
directors. I said that Guillermo del Toro did the better job of the two,
although David Semel still did a very good job. This episode is directed by
Semel as well, and I didn’t really find that the direction for it was
fantastic. The episode definitely was well made, and the scares and thrills
were well directed, but nothing really stuck out as great. However, the writing
for the episode was still very good. The dialogue did seem very realistic like
things actual people would say. The characters were well realized, and I enjoyed
watching their progressions (and regressions, for some). The narrative elements
of the episode were very good; they kept me interested.
The first
two episodes were very good at making the scares were abrupt and very
affecting, to me at least. Luckily, they are the same here. There are some
scenes with a build-up of tension, and although it was by far not the most
affecting tension I’ve ever seen on horror shows on television, it was good.
The scares in this episode that were more disturbing were done better. Something
about those scenes made them very effective in actually scaring the audience
instead of grossing them out. However, there was one scene that did rely on
disgust to try to scare the audience, and it felt more disgusting than
disturbing. It was only one, though. As far as the thrills go, they’re very sudden
and very thrilling. There were some moments in these scenes that the direction
did stick out to me. There were good thrills in this episode.
This episode
may not be directed as well as the first two, but it’s still very well written
and very interesting. Any lack of scares and thrills in the first half were
made up for in the second half, and there was also good character development.
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