This Overlooked Sci-Fi Horror Perfectly Blends Vampires, Science, and Apocalypse
If you’ve grown tired of modern fantasy vampires, enter modern sci-fi vampires… And no, we don’t mean M*rbius.
There are always several ways to go about a popular topic in fiction. High and low fantasy; grounded and space sci-fi; man-made and natural apocalypse; you name it. However, when it comes to vampires, the rules were set over a century ago: it’s a magical condition, a curse that turns dying humans into those bloodsucking night crawlers who crave for human victims and dark aesthetics.
There have been many attempts to turn vampires from fantasy to sci-fi, each of them properly disastrous — but we’re here to talk about the most recent and decent one.
Vampirism: Not a Curse, but a Virus
The common approach in all sci-fi vampire takes is that instead of an unholy curse, vampirism is a mysterious virus, and the TV show we’re talking about didn’t shy away from this trope. In V Wars, the deadly virus begins spreading at a rapid pace after climate change releases it from its ice prison by melting the iceberg.
As more and more people get turned into vampires, humankind is split into the hunters and the hunted. One Dr. Luther Swann enters the new reality with a clear task: he wants to understand the virus and find a way to defeat it… Which proves quite hard to do as the world around him is filled with horror and bloodshed, and even his friend has become one of the vampire leaders after getting infected.
V-Wars Is a Certified Audience Pleaser
Don’t get us wrong: 2019’s V-Wars didn’t perform a miracle and turn sci-fi vampires into the prevalent subgenre. However, it’s the most decent and recent attempt at doing so, and while it’s no critical hit, the audiences loved the TV show. On Rotten Tomatoes, V-Wars boasts a near-perfect 96% Audience Score against the less impressive 60% from critics.
A major attraction of the series is its star Ian Somerhalder, an actor familiar to most teenage vampire enjoyers: Somerhalder is primarily known for portraying Damon Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries. He just feels natural surrounded by blood and evil creatures of the dark, albeit this time, he’s not one of them for a change.