Let’s Talk About: From

I’m going to switch gears for a minute here and delve into something I don’t normally talk about: the wondrous world of television. Aside from a few brief comments On The Television Side of Things at the tail-end of my annual Top Tens, I’ve never devoted an entry to a television series on this site, mostly because I prefer reading and writing to binge watching anything on Netflix (especially since I cancelled my Netflix account). However, I’m willing to make an exception for From, MGM+’s criminally underrated horror series that has thus far succeeded in capturing my enthusiasm. With season two having just wrapped this past Sunday, I thought I’d take a page or two and lay out some the mysteries that have been introduced thus far and present my current working theory as to what the hell’s going on, which is actually tame compared to what’s floating around the web. Besides, I haven’t seen Asteroid City yet and have zero interest in watching Indiana Jones be put in his place by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, so without further ado…

Be forewarned – spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 abound in plenteousness…

PREMISE

From is a chilling little nightmare set piece centering on a small Middle American town that looks like it could be a pit stop in The Walking Dead. There’s a rundown diner, a makeshift medical clinic, a chapel, a vaguely Victorian-style mansion, a post office, an empty pool, a rusted playground, and a smattering of ramshackle homes, all mostly arrayed along a single street. We’re introduced to this nameless town at the start of season one, just as the townsfolk are battening down the hatches in preparation for dusk. By day, the town looks like any other dying small American town without a lawn care service; by night, the monsters emerge from the surrounding woods. These monsters look just like you and me, save for their accoutrements – there’s a cowboy, a milkman, a bride, an old 19^th-century spinster, and a smiling guy who looks like a psychotic extra from Happy Days, among others. These creatures sleep during the day and come out at night to hunt, cannot be killed by any conventional means, and are content to stalk you at a speed just below “casual stroll,” smiling all the while. Mysterious stone talismans affixed near each building’s entrance keep the monsters out, but don’t deter them from tapping on the windows and doors all night long, beckoning you to come outside and play. The power of the talismans is broken should anyone inside let the creatures in, we learn, and the results are grisly. These creatures aren’t interesting in feeding on you, explains Donna, a veteran townie of three years – they like to play.

Oh, and they also seem to know everyone’s names.

With sadistic vampire-esque monsters roaming the streets at night, you might be wondering why the hell anyone would stay in such a place (besides the outrageously low property taxes). The town, we soon learn, exists in some kind of pocket dimension, drawing people in from across the United States and refusing to let them leave. Everyone currently trapped there was in the process of driving somewhere when they came across an uprooted tree blocking the road, a bad omen of what was in store for them (“Everyone sees the tree,” explains Donna to several newcomers at the start of this season). Forced to turn back, every ill-fated traveler found themselves stuck in the town, where every road out invariably loops back to the center and every path through the forest leads to darkness and death. No matter how many exits and side roads one takes in their attempt to escape, they always find themselves back outside the diner, where those who have been through it all before shake their heads, invite them inside, and welcome them to their new hell. Suffice it to say, there is no cell reception, air traffic, or familiar geography that gives any indication of where the town is even situated.

At least the neighbors bring you flowers from time to time…

At the center of it all is de-facto mayor slash sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), an Iraq War vet who is struggling to keep everyone alive, his sanity intact, and hope in a ticket home kindled. Whatever dark forces created this place are conspiring against him and everyone else trapped in the town, and the proverbial walls are rapidly closing in…

WE GOT OURSELVES A MYSTERY, SCOOB

The obvious horror elements aside, From has a strong mystery component, which may have something to do with the involvement of several key people from Lost (one of the executive producers, at least one director, and Harold Perrineau are all Lost alumni). From the moment the Matthews family rolls into town at the start of season one to start their worst vacation ever, they begin probing the secrets of the town and searching for answers, to the consternation of several town veterans who are hesitant to rock the supernatural boat. The mystery aspect both intrigued and concerned me from the start. While I didn’t watch much Lost back in the day, I understand at a certain point it felt like the writers were just throwing things at the wall to see what would stick. Fortunately, From seems to be avoiding its spiritual predecessor’s mistakes by maintaining a sense of forward momentum, internal consistency, and relative groundedness (so far, anyway).

From does a very good job of establishing rules and then abiding by them, so much so that whenever something new is added to the mix it never feels like a violation or something being shot at you from out of left field, like a polar bear on a tropical island. For instance, it is established that the monsters only come out at night and can’t get inside if you hang a talisman by the entrance, unless someone lets them in or leaves the door open. The question then becomes what the limitations of the talismans are. Will they work in a vehicle? A room? How about a tent? All these environments are tested during the course of the first season, and the answer seems to be this: so long as it’s an enclosed space, it’s enough. The series also does an effective job of introducing subversions or workarounds to these rules, so that you never feel like you’ve been cheated or misled in any way. The best example of this comes about midway through this past season, when one character (again, spoiler) actually manages to kill one of the monsters. By that point, it was well established that the monsters are nigh invulnerable, able to shrug off bullets like an elephant shaking off an ornery gnat, so the fact that the residents are able to kill one comes as a game-changer. Fortunately for the dramatic tension, it’s clear that the method employed was only going to work once, so the residents’ achievement is somewhat undercut by the knowledge that it was a one-off (the fact that you get to know some the monsters by sight gives its death some impact as well, especially since it was easily the creepiest one of the bunch).

R.I.P., Smiley McGee. We hardly knew ye.

Whatever this place is, we’re made to understand that the monsters are just the tip of the iceberg. As the episodes pass, the mysteries concealed within the surrounding forest deepen, with questions begetting questions and answers (few as they are) leading to even more questions. At the end of season one, I expressed concern that everything would become too ridiculous and nonsensical to handle, a misgiving that has thus far proved unfounded (knock on wood). Though things get pretty darn weird pretty damn quick, so far all the weirdness has a semblance of interconnectivity to it. Far from being random, you get the sense that all the supernatural phenomena is somehow related, you’re just not sure how as of yet.

In the first season finale, several characters happen upon a network of tunnels filled with antique luggage and furniture, quickly realizing that this is where the monsters sleep. Shared hallucinations are all the rage amongst the townies as well, with multiple residents experiencing visions involving ghoulish corpses, creepy marionettes, and an arcane symbol that has a habit of popping up in the most unexpected places. Victor, an older resident who has been trapped in the town since he was a boy, shows several characters mysterious “faraway trees,” haunted looking oaks with great black hollows that each lead to different locations (some of the destinations, we learn, are not exactly pleasant). Other characters discover another tree with glass bottles hanging from the branches, which apparently is guarded by the spirits of angry civil war soldiers. When Sheriff Boyd and another character venture deep into the forest late in season one, they happen upon a lighthouse, of all things, rising high above the trees and most definitely not overlooking an ocean. Tabitha Matthews (the wife/mother of the newly arrived family) frequently sees ghostly little Gollum-like children who scurry around crying “Unkooee.” Sheriff Boyd’s flight into a faraway tree at the end of season one leads him to a medieval dungeon at the start of two, a torture chamber replete with wall shackles and emaciated corpses. His visit triggers the appearance of a creepy music box with a ballerina figurine, which begins to appear to several people throughout the town as a herald of impending doom.

I haven’t even mentioned the parasitic blood-swimming worms yet…

Weird as all this is (and believe me, there’s much more), everything seems to make sense within the context of the show, like individual puzzle pieces scattered across a mostly empty table. Whereas Lost became notorious for setting up mysteries without having any clue of where they would lead, From so far seems to be leading… somewhere. It’s not clear as of yet what it’s all building towards, but everything seems to be connected, or at least stemming from something.

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Though we have not yet been giving any clear indicator of what this place is or how any of it works, you get the sense that it’s been around for a long time. The series is full of anachronistic elements, from the monsters’ wardrobes to the antiques in the tunnels to the buildings comprising the town. While much of the town reflects something out of the Midwest in the 1950s, the chapel is hewed from rough stone and is clearly much older, and the presence of Colony House (the Victorian-style manse) on the outskirts is suspect as well. There’s an old timey aesthetic lurking on the fringes here, like something that was buried long ago and is creeping back up to the surface, covered in maggots.

All these disparate elements culled from over a century of American history could be an indicator that time works a little differently here. There are subtle clues that certain things either don’t age or belong to a different time completely, notably the Boy in White and the stray dog, both of whom were around when Victor was a lad and are still romping around the woods four-plus decades later.

It’s obvious that there is some controlling element or entity keeping everyone inside the town, because things go cock-up very quickly when people decide they don’t want to play by the “rules.” In season one, Jim Matthews (the husband/father) determines that all the wiring in the houses leads nowhere, deducing that something else is supplying the town with power. He and Tabitha begin a hole-digging operation in the basement, while he concurrently spearheads the construction of a radio tower on the top of Colony House to broadcast an SOS. As soon as the tower is operational, a voice crackles though their CB radio, identifying Jim by name and warning him not to continue digging that hole. A storm suddenly rips through and destroys the tower, and the Matthews house abruptly caves in, filling the hole. Whatever forces are at play here, they’re watching, and they don’t like it when you go digging.

Unless you’re digging graves. That goes with the territory.

I’VE GOT SOMETHING… IT’S NOT MUCH, BUT IT COULD BE A THEORY

There’s a lot of bizarre theories floating around the Internet at the moment, most of which are pretty out there, even for a horror series. The dumbest ones involve time travel and speculation that certain characters are either future versions or different versions of other characters, while the more interesting ones involve Irish mythology and folk tales, centering on the possibility of the forest monsters being malevolent fairies called Sluagh (look it up). Though nothing concrete has been revealed thus far, one character has proposed a theory of her own – that the town absorbs and manifests the fears of those who die there. This theory has some merit; the character’s brother, who died in season one, was deathly afraid of cicadas, and this season introduced a new threat in the form of swarms of cicadas, which are tied to the hallucinations and the music box. I actually like this theory, and it does fit at least some of the pieces on the table. If this is the case, it could be that each of the monsters represent someone or something that a deceased resident feared in life (who wasn’t terrified of their milkman growing up?).

Otherwise, in the second season finale, another character proposes that the town actually feeds on residents’ hope, allowing them to think there’s a chance they’ll be able to make it home before closing in for the kill. While this does have some merit, the proposal came from the ghost of Sheriff Boyd’s dead wife (who may or may not have been speaking for the forces of darkness), so we’re going to take this one with a grain of salt.

Whatever the case, the pallid little ghost children that Tabitha has been seeing are clearly at the center of it all, or at least near center. We now know that the mysterious symbol people have been seeing comes from the children, who modelled it after a tangle of roots visible through a circular opening in the top of the tunnels like something out of The Ring. There’s no indicator yet as to what “Unkooee” could mean, but I’m hopeful it will be something clever akin to the “Hodor” / “hold the door” reveal in Game of Thrones. Admittedly, I spent far too long playing anagrams trying to uncover some hidden meaning, so at this point I’ve come to accept the possibility that it might just be gibberish.

Truth be told, I settled in my heart back in season one that whatever this is all leading towards will likely be disappointing. As is the case with most mysteries, the questions are more tantalizing than the answers, the journey more satisfying than the destination. However, the final episode of season two gave me enough hope that the writers do have a plan in place. Only time will tell.

CONCLUSION

To close, From has thus far succeeded in capturing my imagination and, after some especially tense episodes, robbing me of sleep. The atmosphere is effectively chilling, the characters (mostly) engaging, and the mysteries ripe for analysis, regardless of what the eventual pay-offs will be. Far from being a mere Lost carbon copy with an Americana aesthetic, From is its own entity, one that’s actively developing a complex mythos that contains flashes of Twin Peaks and the works of Stephen King (in fact, King himself has given the series his ringing endorsement).

I’m cautiously optimistic going into season three, especially since the recent finale promises to shake things up considerably. If you love horror and are down for terrifying monsters, creepy imagery, and occasional payloads of gore, pay this nameless little town a visit. You’ll be glad you came…