This is one of Del Toro's endearing qualities: he wears his influences with a ready abandon. For what is Flight 753 from Berlin if not a winged update of the Demeter, the stricken Russian schooner that brought Dracula to Whitby? And yet at the same time this opening salvo also looks to the past doffing its cap to an illustrious ancestor. Reputedly the first instalment of a trilogy, it is the sort of fast-paced, high-concept outing that seems tailor-made for either a big-screen adaptation or - as Hogan has enthused - "a long-form, cable-type TV series". The scene provides an appropriately cinematic curtain-raiser for The Strain, a modern-day vampire yarn cowritten by the Mexican film director Guillermo Del Toro with author Chuck Hogan. Inside, at first glance, the crew-members and passengers appear all to be dead in their seats. The emergency services are mobilised and the incoming jets are hastily rerouted, while Flight 753 simply sits out there on the tarmac like some beached leviathan. F light 753 from Berlin lands without a hitch at JFK International Airport, taxis towards the terminal and then abruptly shuts down.
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