Popular Reviews of The Elmwood Strain

Every single character is so awful and disgusting from the start, that it is beyond belief that the protagonist would go anywhere with any of them. They are just so relentlessly horrible, this podcast is unlistenable. The worst thing is, the acting and sound design are really good.

I stopped halfway through episode 5.One of my pet peeves is stories that run on people making stupid or incomprehensible decisions. The fact that the main character remains with these nasty people that used to be her friends is bewildering. They are bunch of total assholes, they belittle her every chance they get, yet she remains with them.I was willing to bite through that, until episode 5 where I totally got lost.Maybe psychedelic drug trips aren't my thing. Maybe I just need to my stories to be straight forward reality. But I was so confused at a certain point that I gave up.The voice acting is very good. The editing is good too. The dialogue's seem real enough. It's a pity the characters were so unlikable.

Psychedelic thriller about a school shooting, that is frankly terribly written. Surprised I got to the end of this one. Purely as a foot note the acting and sound is reasonably good

Dreadful. One of the worst and most disappointing audio dramas I've ever listened too. The main character is too gullible to root for and the supporting characters are so unlikeable I couldn't bear it by the time I'd dragged myself to the halfway point of the series. The plot is unclear for the most part, with themes popping up here and there with little depth.I hardly ever give up on any form of media that I begin but I couldn't force myself to the end of this. Truly awful.

I stopped after episode 6. After her brother commits a school shooting, Paige moves away form her town to live a life of quiet anonymity. She returns to her old home town when she learns that one of her former best friends has passed away. Perhaps because the premise involves the tragedy of a school mass shooting, I had set myself up for hoping The Elmwood Strain had something interesting to say. But it turns out to be an empty exercise in psychedelic horror. The villains are sign posted as abusive villains and never gain any dimension. You get the sense that Paige feels guilty for what has happened to them. But what exactly does Paige owe? Is she supposed to pay for her brother's crimes that she's never condoned? That's a ridiculously unfair standard. Is she corruptible like her brother or anyone else in the town, sort of like the self destructive characters of Annihilation? Well, if this plot thread even exists, it's very well hidden. This is a chase in which one thing happens after the other, but there's nothing that connects these occurrences to mean anything.

I can't fault this podcast for the acting or the sound quality... but I also can't argue with the other reviewers. This is potentially a fascinating set-up, but it's just hard to see why the protagonist would remain where she is when the people around her are so obviously unpleasant and evil. This is a potentially very traumatising subject, and I don't think it's handled carefully enough.

Once I started listening, I had to binge the rest of the episodes. Intriguing psychedelic and surrealist vibes. Some of the characters are definitely terrible people as the other reviews point out, but it's not like the podcast was trying to paint them as good people. They did seem initially sympathetic as people trying to get by in a dying town, but then it's quickly revealed that they're the villains of the story and there's definitely something more going on with them. I found the post credits ending particularly intriguing as I feel it recontextualized all the events that took place and the way the characters acted.

It's entertaining enough to keep your attention, although the writing is mediocre.The characters are extremely hard to swallow. The actors did an amazing job of making you hate them. Like, these characters go from obnoxious to evil and I despise all of them through all of it. Whether you will like this depends on how high your standards are, and more importantly, how many exhausting losers you can deal with in a story.

Everyone except the main character is absolutely awful, but the main character continues to get dragged along with these people she doesn't even like. There's a lot of sound with no context, so you don't know what's going on. It's just loud, and gets louder when you have to crank up the volume to hear them talk quietly or whisper. Honestly didn't enjoy listening to the main character continue to put herself through this mental and emotional torture.