We’ve all been on a road trip and traveled through one of those small, quiet towns, sometimes after taking a wrong turn. Now imagine trying over and over to leave the town, only to end up right back in the heart of it, and said town and its residents don’t seem right. Welcome to the premise of From, a new horror series on Epix, brought to you by some people behind such shows as Lost and Fringe, which may mean different things to different people.
The setup is quite eerie in episode one, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,“ as we meet the town’s people, led by Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau). Viewers quickly witness what happens when the townsfolk don’t obey certain rules, like keeping their windows and doors closed when the sun goes down. This is the lovely town the Matthews family drives into, lost after needing to detour from their planned route. The parents, Jim and Tabitha Mathews (Eion Bailey and Catalina Sandino Moreno), and their two kids, Ethan and Julia (Simon Webster and Hannah Cheramy), are all traveling together in an RV, which already has the stress level at a higher level for different reasons.
Attempting to leave the town, the family crashes, leaving the young son too injured to move, creating more issues as the sun goes down. Boyd and the town doctor Kristie (Chloe Van Landschoot) join Jim and Ethan in the crashed RV as the mother and son are taken to safety. Kristie is left with the son and Boyd to help protect them from whatever lives in the woods.
The family, especially Jim, is very confused. The episode ends with the RV surrounded by what lives in the woods, which is not what you’d expect, as the RV occupants settle in for a long night.
If the setup sounds somewhat familiar, it has been used many times in the past. Stephen King has almost made a career out of this storyline—the threat outside versus the threat from within. People seem to make great monsters, and while we don’t know much at this point, there are hints that this is a bizarre town the Matthews family has stumbled upon. It should be interesting to see how the whole town dynamic is explained, not to mention how the family deals with what is sure to be an unbelievable story.
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The town itself is an excellent, creepy character, with a wonderful feeling of foreboding and tension hanging over it. The people go about their business like you would expect, yet they have that haunted, shifty eyes look that makes it feel like everyone is walking on eggshells. The characters and actors who portray them in a show like this are so important, and that edgy feel has to be maintained more often than not. Still, the atmosphere laid out, the tension, the fear, also needs to remain consistent to keep the viewer off-balance and unsure of what will happen next.
While “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is nothing groundbreaking, the season one episode was done very well and set up so that my curiosity is peaked as to what will happen moving forward. It remains to be seen if From can keep this level of tension up throughout the season, both for the characters and the viewers watching them on TV.