I love and hate the horror genre. At its dazzling height, it can deliver thrills, scares, and laughs in a way that no other piece of fiction can really match. On the other hand, its cavernous lows are bound to make an audience groan in irritation.
With this in mind, I took a look at Fox’s The Passage. As someone who is intrigued by vampires, the previews got at my nagging desire for a human story with weird monsters and an interesting set-up.
…but is it any good? Well, I’m pleased to say that it has the potential to be one of the best new dramas on television.
The Cast Sells The Story.
A great show starts with a great cast, and The Passage has one hell of a line-up!
Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Saniyya Sidney do a great job as Brad Wolgast and Amy Bellafonte. The show takes a big risk by framing the action around their relationship, but it works incredibly well. At first, viewers might not know what their dynamic will be, partly because of the direction of the plot. However, the writers manage to develop a nice father-daughter connection with understandable motives.
The vampires are no slouches, either. While the full extent of the oncoming threat has not been revealed yet, Jamie McShane and Brianne Howey have already managed to turn their characters into extremely disturbing antagonists. The dream sequences even manage to illustrate the personalities and possible powers of Dr. Fanning (aka Patient Zero) and Shauna Babcock. It’s well done… and fucking terrifying.
If a hero is only as great as his greatest villain, this is going to be one hell of a rollercoaster ride!
Caroline Chikezie, Emmanuelle Chriqui, McKinley Belcher III, Henry Ian Cusick, and Vincent Piazza round out the main cast. They all do a good job, but there’s a lack of balance that will need to be addressed in future episodes. We all know that Brad and Amy are the main characters, but the writers need to work on developing the supporting cast, too. It’ll give the viewers a chance to hang on to every single frame!
I’m confident that the writers will get around to it, but it’s still worth saying, dammit!
The Story Is Great.
The Passage has some rich source material at its disposal, but I think that it’s also important to point out the little bits that it borrows from other stories in the genre.
The story starts off in the jungles of South America. Drs. Tim Fanning and Jonas Lear are on the hunt for the legend of a 250-year-old man, but what they discover is far more terrifying. Dr. Fanning is bitten and apparently left on death’s door, but miraculously survives as his security team guns down the responsible vampire. In a twist out of The Stand, he is taken back to the U.S. and monitored as a part of Project Noah, a government program that seeks to develop cures for cancer, AIDS, and all sorts of other ailments.
Of course, the scientists just turn inmates into vampires, so they conclude that a child is needed for their next round of experiments.
That’s where Amy and Brad come in. At first, Brad wants to do his job, but the conflict of taking an orphan to a “medical trial” gets to him. He goes on the run with Amy, but finds it difficult to stave off the inevitable.
And by the way, the vampires are starting to test their mind powers on their unsuspecting keepers. What could possibly go wrong?
If you’ve ever seen The Strain, you can probably make a good guess.
These pieces make for the perfect set-up to an oncoming vampire apocalypse, but there’s just one problem.
The Pacing Could Be An Issue.
At the moment, the development of the show is fine. We know who each character is, the effects are fine, and the construction of the plot works well. However, the threat of pacing problems could rear its ugly head in the near future. The books take place over a period of 1,000 years, so it might be a problem if the show jumps back and forth and back and forth without much in the way of guidance.
The writers can easily get around this problem by cutting, compressing, and focusing on the downward spiral in an interesting way. The Strain managed to do that when it first aired a few years back, but it adopted a pitch black comedy vibe that made its audience laugh as society fell apart.
The Passage is the exact opposite of that. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad, but it does run the risk of becoming so dreary and depressing that viewers might check out.
Conclusion.
The Passage is an impressive look at the vampire genre. While it does run the risk of hitting the wall, it has built up enough momentum to sustain itself for the immediate future. The characters are refined, the story is a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the worldbuilding that accompanies the downfall of civilization.
If you’re in the mood for a thrill ride, give it a shot!
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