Main cast: Harold Perrineau, Eion Bailey, Catalina Sandino Moreno. Paramount+.
Seasons: Three seasons have been released so far, with a fourth confirmed.
Year: 2022
A family traveling in an RV gets stuck in a town where unsettling things happen at night. They soon realize they're not the only ones, and above all, there's no way out.
From is a horror/science fiction TV series that follows in the footsteps of Lost (the two series share the same executive producers), but it takes a completely different turn. It's a three-season series (with the fourth coming out in 2026) where reality and illusion are called into question, and psychology and sociology take on different meanings because every law governing our universe is challenged.
From is not just a series, but a place and a moment for reflection. The characters telling this story are many, but it all starts with a family. Mother and father (Tabitha and Jim) are traveling in an RV with their two children: Julie, a rebellious teenager, and Ethan, a sweet little boy about 6/7 years old. While driving along a highway in the United States, they are blocked by a massive tree barring the road, forcing them to turn back. They drive for a while in the opposite direction, but suddenly they see the tree again. The family starts to suspect something is wrong, and in trying to find their way, they end up in this lost town where everything begins.
Soon we meet the protagonists of this "collective delirium" who try to stay sane while everything around them falls apart. The family is immediately warned by a priest and kept safe from sunset. They are helped and protected through the night when anything can happen. Indeed, every day when the sun sets, men and women emerge from the forest surrounding the town and walk at night. Unfortunately, however, these are not simple human beings, but infernal monsters disguised as people, ready to devour any human they come across. In that case, there's no escape, only flight. The situation is terrifying and disarming. There are no solutions, only remedies. Only slight "patches" that allow the inhabitants to survive day by day. As the story progresses, dynamics and characters are revealed, starting with Sheriff Boyd and the tough Donna, who together take charge of helping all the inhabitants, managing difficult situations, rationing food, and making important decisions. But they're not the only protagonists; among them we have the sheriff's son Ellis with his sweet partner Fatima, the cook Tian-Chen who runs the restaurant with her son Kenny, the town's only doctor Kristi, the only priest Father Khatri, and the town's "weirdo" who has been there the longest, Victor. Besides them, there are dozens of other terrified people.
The family, which embodies us viewers by covering almost all possible ages of those watching the series, discovers the dynamics step by step, hand in hand with us. The only source of salvation they have are talismans of undefined origin hung on the entrance doors, which, together with sealed and darkened windows, keep the house safe from the monsters. Unless someone invites them in.
This is where the series plays with cruelty and deception, where the nighttime monsters resemble lost family members, people who live in the real world, and illusions that plague the minds of the poor inhabitants, inducing them to commit horrible and uncontrollable acts. Many of them get lost in this oblivion of despair, many open the doors allowing the monsters to enter, many slaughter each other in search of truth. Some even condemn their own souls by killing their loved ones.
The veil of tragedy and despair that accompanies the entire series starts from the first episode and never ends, or at least not until the end of the story, probably. Every situation is a moment of reflection, knowledge, and personal challenge about what is right and what is wrong. It's a game that expands between the boundaries of the real and the unreal, but above all between the boundaries of the ethical and the moral. Is it true that in a place that seems to be a spacetime hole with its own laws, anything goes? Is it true that there, only there, we are exempt from the laws governing the world we know? Is it true that we would be ready to do horrible things just to protect ourselves or our family? The beauty of this series is that it makes you turn to the person next to you and ask: what would they do in that situation? Would we do the same? And what would I do in their place?
Every day is a challenge, every day is a victory or for some a defeat. But everyone acts for a common cause: finding a way out. It's thanks to this that, amid so much pain, we see how people come to collaborate and share. People of every kind, from everywhere, forced to live as one big family, in one small town, with little food and little space. The boundaries of what is yours and what is everyone's, of space and privacy, are also broken. Is it just utopia, or is it true that we are born to collaborate, for better or worse?
From the beginning, identification with the characters and the situation is very deep, but the further you go, the more every viewer questions themselves, their own choices, but above all their deep self-knowledge. We no longer know which side we're on, what we would do in their place, and who we might become in that same situation. We realize we're lucky not to be the protagonists of this series and that human fragility is something not to be underestimated. It's easy to call the next person "crazy" when you don't walk in their shoes.
