It started with a plane. A quiet, dead Boeing 777 sitting on the tarmac at JFK with the lights out and the shades drawn. If you saw the original trailer for The Strain back in 2014, you probably remember that specific chill. It wasn’t the jump-scare heavy marketing we usually get for horror. It was clinical. It felt like a CDC briefing gone wrong. Guillermo del Toro has this specific way of making the grotesque look tactile, and that first look at his "strigoi" changed the vampire game before the show even aired.
Vampires were pretty much "sparkly" or "sexy" at the time. Then comes this trailer. It showed us biology. It showed us a stinger—a muscle-bound appendage shooting out of a throat like some nightmare version of a chameleon's tongue.
The FX network knew they had something weird on their hands. Looking back, the marketing campaign was actually controversial. Remember the billboards? They had to take some down because people couldn't handle the image of a worm burrowing into a human eyeball. That same visceral energy was baked into every frame of the trailer for The Strain, promising a show that was less Twilight and more Outbreak with fangs.
The Anatomy of a Perfect Horror Hook
What made that first trailer for The Strain work so well? It was the pacing. It didn't give away the Master immediately. Instead, it focused on Dr. Ephraim Goodweather—played by Corey Stoll—trying to solve a medical mystery. By framing a supernatural apocalypse as a viral infection, the trailer tapped into a very specific kind of urban anxiety. We aren't afraid of Dracula in a cape anymore; we're afraid of the guy coughing next to us on the subway.
Carlton Cuse, the showrunner who came over from Lost, understood that the "hook" needed to be the transformation. The trailer teased the loss of humanity. You saw the loss of hair, the shedding of ears, and the way the body becomes a mere vessel for the blood-sucking parasite. It was gross. It was beautiful. It was pure Del Toro.
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There’s a specific shot in the early promos where the plane’s cargo hold is being inspected. It’s dark. It’s quiet. Then, a giant, ornate cabinet—the coffin—is just... there. No music. Just the sound of wood creaking. That’s how you build dread. Most trailers today use that "BWAAA" Inception noise every five seconds, but back then, The Strain relied on the sound of wet, clicking throats.
Why the Marketing Sparked a Public Backlash
You can't talk about the trailer for The Strain without talking about the "Eye-Worm." The marketing team at FX went hard. Maybe too hard. They released a teaser featuring a capillary worm (the capillaria) wiggling its way into a wide-open eye.
It was everywhere.
On taxis. On giant posters in Los Angeles. On YouTube pre-roll ads.
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The backlash was swift. People were genuinely nauseated. FX eventually had to replace the artwork in several major cities. But honestly? That's the best kind of PR a horror show can get. It signaled to the audience that this wasn't going to be a "safe" TV show. If you couldn't handle the thirty-second trailer, you definitely weren't going to survive the season.
Comparing the Comic, the Book, and the Screen
If you were a fan of the original trilogy written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, the trailer for The Strain was a moment of truth. Fans were worried. How do you translate the specific, biological horror of the books—where the "vampires" lose their digestive systems and basically poop as they eat—to basic cable?
The trailer answered that by showing the "stinger" in action. Seeing that six-foot-long muscle fly out of a mouth and latch onto a neck proved that the production wasn't watering down the source material. It stayed true to the "biological" vampire. These weren't cursed aristocrats. They were hosts for a hive-mind parasite.
The Legacy of the First Look
When you re-watch the trailer for The Strain now, it feels like a time capsule of a specific era of "Prestige Horror." This was before The Last of Us made fungus scary. The Strain was pioneering that "science-meets-monster" vibe on a massive scale.
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It also highlighted David Bradley as Abraham Setrakian. The trailer gave us just enough of his gravelly voice to know he was the Van Helsing we needed—bitter, prepared, and swinging a sword concealed in a cane.
The show ran for four seasons. Some people loved the ending; others thought it went off the rails. But nobody forgets that first impression. That feeling of watching a silent plane at JFK and knowing something terrible was about to walk off of it.
How to Re-watch The Strain the Right Way
If you’re heading back into this world after seeing a clip or the old trailer, keep these things in mind. First, don't expect a traditional vampire story. This is a pandemic story. If you treat it like a medical thriller that happens to have monsters, it holds up way better.
Second, pay attention to the color palettes. Del Toro used specific ambers and cyans to represent the infection and the resistance. It’s subtle, but once you see it in the trailer, you can't unsee it in the episodes.
Actionable Steps for Fans of The Strain:
- Watch the "He is Here" Teaser: This is the specific 30-second spot that caused the eye-worm controversy. It’s a masterclass in minimalist horror.
- Check out the "Director's Cut" of the Pilot: If you can find the home media versions, Del Toro's commentary on the first episode explains exactly how they translated the "biological" look from the trailer to the actual screen.
- Read the Graphic Novels: If the visuals in the trailer moved you, the Dark Horse comic adaptation features some of the most grotesque and detailed art of the strigoi ever produced.
- Track the Evolution of the Master: Compare the Master’s appearance in the Season 1 trailer to his later incarnations. The production team actually changed the prosthetics based on fan feedback after the first season aired.
The marketing for this series remains a textbook example of how to sell a "niche" monster to a mainstream audience. It didn't apologize for being weird. It leaned into the slime, the worms, and the heartbreak of a family being torn apart by a virus. If you haven't seen the trailer for The Strain in a few years, go find it on YouTube. It still holds up as one of the most effective pieces of horror marketing in the last twenty years.
The series is currently available for streaming on platforms like Hulu and Disney+ (depending on your region), making it easy to see if the show actually lived up to the hype of that first, terrifying look. Watching the world fall apart in slow motion remains a haunting experience, especially given how much more "real" pandemic fiction feels to us today than it did back in 2014.