Vampires stopped being trendy a couple of years ago. Any pop culture aficionado will tell you that. But this should not be a problem for “The Strain”, premiering 10pm Sunday, July 13.  Based on a series of books co-written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, “The Strain” shuns our dominant ideas of what we imagine vampires to be – seductive, poetic, even sparkly — in favor of a much more grounded interpretation of these monsters.

The vampires in “The Strain” operate like parasites, perpetuating their kind via infection. If they can’t achieve that goal with first-hand contact, the clumps of writhing, burrowing worms they leave behind will do the job.  Yes, this show is gory and disgusting at times; take those viewer discretion advisories seriously if you have a weak stomach.

FX has high hopes for “The Strain”, the first original it has scheduled in the highly competitive Sunday primetime slot. If it proves to be as popular as the network appears to be banking on, “The Strain” could eventually give AMC’s “The Walking Dead” some real competition in this space.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Helping del Toro flesh out his vision for TV is executive producer Carlton Cuse (“Lost “,”Bates Motel“), but it doesn’t take long for del Toro’s signature, visceral style to take hold. The sets are beautiful, and even at its most uncomfortable, the imagery in the premiere is rich.

Proof of its potency will be in how much of the series opener’s audience returns to watch subsequent episodes. After watching the first four hours of “The Strain,” one can’t declare with absolute certainty that FX has a hit on its hands. This assertion is not a matter of quality; those installments are quite watchable. But one wonders if horror show viewers have the patience to wait several episodes for the frights to really start kicking in.

“The Strain’s” series premiere feels like a medical investigation drama, as most of the action revolves around the Center for Disease Control’s New York-based Canary Team and a mysterious pawn shop broker, Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), who has a past with these creatures.

Viewers won’t meet another key character, a rat exterminator named Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand), until the second episode. But he’s destined to be a fan favorite, along with Gus Elizalde (Miguel Gomez), a reformed gangbanger who is very protective of his family, especially his mother.

Canary Team’s Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his colleagues Dr. Nora Martinez (Mía Maestro, an odd fit in this role) and Jim Kent (Sean Astin), are the first people called in to investigate when a plane from Germany lands in a dark area of the airfield and goes silent…and cold. Inside, Eph and Nora discover a cabin full of passengers who appear to have died with little evidence of struggle.

Then things really get strange.

In the course of these events we also meet Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde), the astronomically wealthy head of a conglomerate known as the Stoneheart Group. The dying Palmer would rather live forever, which is why he’s made a deal with an ancient species represented by a calculating executive known as Thomas Eichhorst (Richard Sammel).  Other players are unwittingly drawn in to this plan, including a modern shock rockstar named Bolivar (Jack Kesy), who holds sway over millions of fans.

If you’re hoping to see hordes of Nosferatu swarming the streets of Manhattan and chomping on unsuspecting pedestrians, prepare to be disappointed. The first few episodes of “The Strain” reveal the smallest glimpses of these vampires, trading much more in the creepiness of the odd circumstances surrounding that dead plane, including the discovery of a very large piece of cargo that kicks off the vampocalypse.

That said, one of the premiere’s minor subplots involving the doomed flight’s youngest passenger is likely to give you the shivers, perhaps even making you look at your loved ones a bit differently.

“The Strain’s” first challenge will be to earn the audience’s investment in character development, particularly Eph, who is great at his job but a detached father and husband. Because of this, his wife Kelly (Natalie Brown) is in the process of leaving him and taking custody of their son, Zack (Ben Hyland). The writers spend a lot of time persuading us to care about this man and his personal problems, banking on the idea that the terrifying onslaught just around the corner will add a new dimension to his profile. It’s a noble idea, but can’t this be accomplished while they’re fighting loads of monsters? That is what a number of people are tuning in for, after all.

Indeed, relying on the audience’s faith in the source material and asking for patience is risky these days, thanks in part to our near-peak saturation of all things zombie-related. Backstory is wonderful, but the promise of screams and adrenaline-fueled flights from shambling death is the reason we’re attracted to this genre.

As such, the pacing of horror storytelling has sped up significantly. Consider the very first episode of “The Walking Dead”. We meet Rick Grimes as he’s heading into an ill-fated confrontation with armed criminals. A bullet badly wounds him, the scene fades to black. Soon after Rick wakes up in a dead world – and that’s when we begin to find out what kind of man he is.

There are merits to slowly revealing the horror at the center of this kind of tale, of course, especially if the goal is to aim for the pain. Perhaps seeing Eph fighting for his family, and Gus doting on his mother, will lend an extra touch of tragedy to the unfolding tale. Forgive us for wishing we weren’t spending so much time in an emotional holding pattern, but don’t worry, FX.  Plenty of viewers are hungry enough to see where this series takes us. Yes, we’ll bite.

“The Strain” premieres at 10pm Sunday, July 13 on FX.