The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

I have recently begun reading the novel The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan the plot revolves around a Vampire invasion of the United States. I have only just started reading the book and I’m hooked. I wanted to talk about it because there are a few things in the begging of the book that I think relate to this project. The book opens with a fantastic tribute/modernisation of Bram Stokers Dracula. A Boeing 777 touches down at JFK Airport and stops dead, all the widow shutters are down and all the lights are off. Nobody can see the inside of the plane and they have no idea what happened to it, it is very unsettling. In the book it is described as a “sleeping leviathan” or a “beached wale, dead or pretending to be dead”. Later on, the characters are in the cargo hold and they find a mysterious long black box (coffin) covered in old writing from an unknown language and it is half full of dirt (just like the in the hold of the Russian ship The Demeter in Bram Stokers Dracula). I thought it was extremely striking having this creepy ancient gothic artefact in the very modern environment of an aircraft cargo hold. There is also a very creepy sequence inside the main passenger seating area, it is fall of lifeless corpses. It is especially eerie because the only sound that is herd comes from the mobile phones of the dead (obviously because concerned loved ones are trying to contact them).