From (Epix US / Netflix elsewhere - 2022)

Discussions about Movies & TV shows not "Super" related.
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shevek
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This show "From" was highly recommended to me by one of my best friends who shares tables with us at Comicons. We talked about it for quite a while, so I figured I'd check it out. Produced as it is by the Russo brothers (who are the second most successful directors of all time next to Spielberg, and are basically the reason for the success of the MCU), why not give it a serious look?

I did wind up getting immersed in the story, which involves road travellers from various parts of the country getting randomly sucked into a dimension where they live in a confined semi-rural village space, and are attacked each night by demons who look like ordinary people until they get close and rip your face off.

So, you're probably thinking this is a lot like a combination of Under The Dome, Lost, and any number of M. Night Shyamalan horror flicks? Pretty much it is. And here's one cool thing: except for a middle-aged hippie boomer named "Donna" and an old Chinese woman who runs the "diner" (yup, of course there's one of those - what did you think, this wasn't Twin Peaks?), every other one of the female characters is simply gorgeous. You have: the hot Latina heroine; the insanely exotic Persian woman; the zoomer girl with the overdeveloped tight body and "I can't even" hormones; the gorgeous bisexual smart-as-a-whip redhead paramedic; a homicidal but rather cute millennial brunette; and the horny little half-Asian nymphomaniac (she puts the moves on a handful of people).

So there's a lot to look at, female cast-wise. The rest of the visuals are bleak. And I mean, really bleak. This ramshackle town, stuck in some other dimension, is a dark, rather uncheery place where the survivors (those who haven't been attacked and killed) barely get by. It was filmed in an amazingly grey, heavily forested part of Nova Scotia which stands very well for "every backwoods town."
Spoiler

At first, the plot is engrossing. You get to meet all the major characters, and they take the time to develop all of them with little expository speeches and flashbacks. It's annoying, but at the same time, endearing you to the story. And then, by Episode 7, things take a bit of a turn, and get both chaotic and a bit ham-fisted.

And by ham-fisted, I mean there's suddenly a very strong "lesbian plot" which wasn't there before, and you don't see it coming. Then the young handsome black guy (the son of the strong, masculine town sheriff) proposes marriage to the extremely beautiful Persian woman, who is the cheery positive light of the town. Because, of course he does in Current Year. At that point, I did feel that it was more than just conveniently diverse casting (the 'priest' in the show is Indian-American. Why, exactly?) even though they're deep in the woods of....Nova Scotia. There were actually "plot boxes" being checked. So that's one thing.

The other thing is that the plots unravel in every chaotic direction. There are not *one*, not *two*, but THREE groups of people trying different ways to try to "get home" and leave their trapped dimension: the hot strong Latina digs a hole through the ground; the engineer & software dev guys build a radio tower on the top of the tallest house in town; and the valiant sheriff treks to the edge of the town with the hot homicidal girl and gets...uh....LOST, and bitten by spiders. The idea that the production team hung thousands of fake plastic spiderwebs across a huge expanse of forest is both hilarious and stunningly un-environmentalist. :)

So, by Episode 10, not only is nothing resolved, but the whole story seems scattered amongst the winds, like the thunderstorm wind that conveniently comes out of nowhere to threaten the radio tower. Which leads me to think: this whole time, they are in this unnamed town in a pocket dimension of some sort, yet they don't speculate at all as to whom their captors are? (Literally, almost nobody talks about this in the script). And then, right at the end of the season, an entire bus of people rolls in to the diner from Grand Rapids..so the writers are going to add yet another dozen characters to the melee when we haven't really even seen the completed story arcs of any of the original bunch?

And there's no indication that this show has even been renewed for a second season anyway. Very unsatisfying ending where everything is left up in the air, yet there aren't really any tangible "cliffhangers."
Ultimately a disappointment. I wouldn't mind seeing a handful of these actresses in science fiction or superheroine costumes in some other series, but I doubt I'd want to follow this mess any further.

But your mileage may vary. What did you think of "From"?

p.s. This is the Persian-Canadian actress who plays "Fatima". Just stunning. She's only been in shorts before, so this is her big break.
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