Critic Reviews

The horror is carefully and strategically placed; one mustn't have too much of a good thing, after all.... So settle in. You will be grossed out.

Enter The Strain, which just may turn out to be the best-executed, most cleverly constructed and most universally enjoyable fright-monger of them all.

By the end of Episode 4, subtitled “It’s Not For Everyone,” the series is earning its mettle as a truly macabre, chilling and rousing war of attrition in which the winner will either take all or stop hell on earth in its bloody tracks.

The Strain is packed with so much macabre imagery and so many clever ideas that it doesn't feel like the resuscitation of a tired genre, but the launch of something new and fun.

While The Strain is pretty much a cauldron churning with familiar ingredients, the dark brew bubbling inside is served up with a great deal of panache.

The Strain dramatizes the book series of the same name and creates a creepy, ominous mood that does it full justice.

The payoff is a work powered by imaginative energy, intelligence and a skilled cast, all of it adding up to smashing entertainment.

The horror-disaster-supernatural mashup thriller premiering Sunday at 10 p.m. is creepily captivating but most assuredly not for the squeamish, or for nervous fliers.

So generous in its jolts that you barely have time to dwell on the plot holes, The Strain may not be the most original thrill ride, but it's among the summer's most enjoyable, elevating its genre clichés with a pulp urgency that, like the monster's icky wormy offspring, gets under your skin and stays there.

Well told, well acted, The Strain might be just the thing for fans of “The Walking Dead” feeling a little too calm this summer.