chrissych 's review for:

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro

1.0

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This book lacks absolutely all the qualities one might expect from Guillermo Del Toro. Eerie atmospheres, vivid imagery, moments of fearful anticipation, and anything resembling good story-telling are all thrown out the window in favor of a mountain of clichés, a woefully obvious narrative, cardboard cut-out characters without a single believable thought or action, and 300 pages of exposition leading up to a sad excuse for a climax. Finished off with the fact that any moment which COULD HAVE conceivably been frightening was dulled down to laughter by the worst writing I've seen since Twilight, this is really not a book intelligent people should be paying 30 dollars for. If you want to read good, affective vampire-related horror, go read John Ajvide Lindqvist's "Let Me In" instead.