'From Season Three Episode Three' Review: A very weak episode with not much going on

From's third season has been slowly chugging along over the past few weeks and it's been a great pleasure to dive back into this insanely cryptic story full of odd characters and a world that makes zero sense. I had read a lot of discussions online about the show, and it's by far one of the best sides of it. All that discussion and theories on what's happening and why. All the attempts to string something together that actually makes some sense even when it's all so farfetched. I've had great fun with it. Though sometimes people mention that this is a show that is intentionally stretched out. So many instances of nothing happening, characters just moving around a space and barely giving each other any answers as to how they feel or what they have been seeing and experiencing. This leads to a lot of poor dialogue where characters suddenly state they have to go, or simply can't talk right now. Splitting up scenes and leading to very little actually being talked about between characters. It seems as if the one thing they all have time for is personal drama. To which the show is more than happy to spend time on that side of things. This happens from time to time, but it isn't something that has bothered me up until this point. And I really understand now what a lot of people have been saying about the show: it's incredibly well made, but the pacing of its story is just downright annoying.

From is a show that established itself with an eerie setup: strange beings of the night lurk the darkness, to which the inhabitants of a town that they cannot escape are reduced to staying indoors where only locations with a specific talisman inside will protect them. Not much is really known about the strange creatures that lurk the night and kill anything that they can come across. Not much is known about the location that these unfortunate souls have found themselves in. It's a show and narrative shrouded in endless mystery, which is a little strange for a show that is now airing at its third season. While I think the last television series that aired that had this much mystery was Lost, From follows quite loosely in its footsteps, but I'm starting to think that a lot of this is more a negative than a positive at this point. From is starting to feel like a show that has managed to run out of excuses to give its characters and thus its audience for the lack of answers. It's beginning to feel a little stale with how each character runs away from responsibility or just weirdly doesn't bring up events that one might think a person would bring up to the few people around them that actually understand.

The strange location of From thrives on haunting its characters. It does this by causing hallucinations that others don't see. Traumatising sights of various nature from swarms of insects of literally seeing the dead. At first these scenes were great, they served as the more horror elements of the show that gave us some thrills and spooks that displayed the ways in which the environment toyed with the characters. But now it's growing a bit stale, primarily because these haunting episodes take place right in front of other characters, and once they end, they simply shrug them off. One character will witness another thrashing around in panic, to which they simply ask if they're okay. These characters have also had similar episodes, yet there's absolutely no further discussion about it. They move on. And this happens far too often at this point. Characters moving on from serious topics, stating they have somewhere else to be. Convenient matters to attend. It no longer feels like a world with plenty of things taking place at once in a desperate bid to find out answers, but more weird behaviour from characters that just doesn't really make any sense. For a show airing its third season, this one has been incredibly dull.

I'm really hoping that things pick up within the next episode with how things are heading. I'm not sure how much more I can take of characters being dumbed down and each one running from any form of dialogue that makes sense. From a technical stand point the show is still quite visually impressive, but I've even noticed a decrease in how it's shot. With the lack of anything taking place, there's a lot less creativity in the directing and camera movements. The most we get at this point is a sudden jump scare which feels far too dated and pulled out of the 2010s. It's a show that can definitely do better than that. What happened to all the atmosphere?! What happened to the creatures that lurk the night and try to let people let them inside?! We've seen very little beyond these creatures suddenly interacting in a more human manner. It's losing some of that supernatural appeal fast. I can't remember the last time we saw them actually moving through the space at night, having any real weight to them. They're just conveniently pulled into the episodes when needed, to the point where it's like they've been partially removed from the show.

I'm sticking with From, I loved the show but I am starting to feel the boredom setting in with everything I've mentioned. And I'm not alone. One look at the show's Reddit page shows endless discussions on people saying the same things. Let's just hope it's not too late for things to improve.