Back to the small screen for a moment, if I may.
Amazon Prime temptingly offers the opportunity to pig-out on obscure and overlooked horror television from every port of call imaginable. After a bit of grazing. I’d highly recommend From, a series filmed in Nova Scotia that’s captured the imagination of myself and Mrs. Sharky.
It should ring several bells if you’re a fan of Lost, The Walking Dead, and Wayward Pines, as a four-pack family unit drives its RV into one of those cursed communities that you can never leave.
To make matters worse, everybody has to be inside and locked down before darkness falls, because monsters (kind of like vampires, kind of like zombies) come out of the woods at night seeking to gain entry into the town’s various residences to murder and mutilate the town’s various residents.
The pale whispering ghouls surround a home, endlessly cajoling and compelling its occupants to throw open their doors so they can be properly displayed as part of a gruesome tableaux come the morning.
On the upside, houses are free, but you might have to clean up the viscera from the most recent undead onslaught.
Still a good deal, if you ask me. I bet it’s cheaper than Salem’s Lot.
Vehicles arrive from a disparate assortment of starting points, and after an interval of freaking out, travelers must decide whether they want to reside in the town itself, under the severe protection of Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), or find some floor space with the free-loving bohemians of Colony House, where the Sheriff’s brooding, model-handsome son Ellis (Corteon Moore) holds court.
The two camps represent humanity as ludicrously polarized despite a shared goal of not wanting to end up as chew toys for a mob of malevolent entities.
Series creator John Griffin does a stellar job of knitting hard horror elements into a character-driven show. The creatures that stalk the populace of this nameless community aren’t driven by a biological need to feed.
They’re just evil and cruel!
The cast of “castaways” on From range from complaining assholes to compassionate caretakers, including a tech bro, an amusement park engineer and his traumatized family, an unstable clergyman, a spooky waitress with voices in her head, and a crayon-coloring man child who’s been exiled in this particular limbo the longest.
As for the bigger picture, Boyd and company must solve the mystery of how they all got there and devise methods of escape from a location that isn’t on any map.
But as one character says bitterly, “We’re not on Gilligan’s Island. We can’t fix the radio with coconuts.”
From keeps enough intriguing subplots at play (e.g., where is the electricity coming from?) to reel in even the casual viewer. At present, there are only two seasons available.
I’ve seen the first one and I’m completely hooked.
The inevitable comparisons to Lost are well warranted. Executive producers Jack Bender and Jeff Pinkner both worked on that genre-defying show.
Perhaps they belong to the same universe? I’ll know more after my next season session.
Editor’s Note: The addictive theme song to From is a minor-key, dirge arrangement of “Que Sera Sera,” performed by the Pixies, that sounds like Lee Hazlewood.
One more reason to tune in.