‘The Strain,’ TV review

FX horror miniseries from Guillermo Del Toro has all the fright stuff with Corey Stoll, David Bradley and Mia Maestro

Whether you prefer your fear to be delivered as an extended psychological tease, or sudden gruesome bolts of old-fashioned lethal violence, “The Strain” gets the job done.

At its heart lies a horror story that, like so many horror stories before, begins with someone innocently opening the wrong door.

Here it’s a flight attendant on what looks to be a routine international airline arrival at JFK. She opens the inside cargo hatch door after hearing an odd noise and the next thing we know, the plane has stopped and all communication has ceased.

Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) from the Centers for Disease Control leads a team aboard in hazmat suits. They find everyone seemingly dead.

Disagreement immediately breaks out about what to do next. The turmoil intensifies when four people on board turn out to be mysteriously alive.

Soon a very creepy wormlike organism turns up, seemingly related to an unidentified box in the cargo hold.

By now we have seen evil forces with an interest in the box. We have also seen Harlem pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), who at first seems hardened and a little crazy.

He approaches the authorities at the airport, telling them he knows what has happened or, more important, is about to happen.

The whole world could be in danger, he tells them. They must destroy everyone who was on the plane, he says, dead or living.

They brush him off, always a mistake in horror films where the crazy old man is the only one who grasps the insanity.

A Guillermo Del Toro tale, produced with Carlton Cuse, Chuck Hogan and Gary Ungar, “The Strain” dramatizes the book series of the same name and creates a creepy, ominous mood that does it full justice.