This is it, folks. This is the greatest movie of all time. It’s better than “Blade Runner” (1982), better than John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), better than “Aliens” (1986). And those movies were all … perfect. (Man the 1980’s really were a golden age for pop culture, weren’t they?)
I was eight years old when I saw this in the theater, and I thereafter was a bit of an Indiana Jones cultist. It wasn’t just the action figures and board games and comic book and posters and role-playing games. I actually resolved to become an archeologist (or a paleontologist), and I thought the best way that I could prepare for that as a third grader was to gain experience “in the field.”
So I would lead my friends on “digs” or “expeditions” in the forests around my neighborhood. We would often arbitrarily pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and then just dig there, with a shovels we borrowed from my family’s garage. We were hoping to find … anything of interest, I guess :buried treasure, dinosaur bones, Indian arrowheads, whatever. (We never did. About the only thing we “discovered” was that tree roots are a real bitch when you’re trying to dig a hole.) I even kept maps and journals of our “adventures.” These are the kinds of things that boys do before they discover girls.
I tried to look the part, too. I had a brown cowboy hat that I hoped could pass for a fedora, an (empty) binocular case and a prop bullwhip snagged from a Levi’s jeans display at the local mall. My older brother called me “Idaho Bones” because I essentially was a cheap, skinny knockoff of the character I wanted to emulate. I hated it at the time, but as an adult, I kinda can’t dispute his assessment.
Oh, well. We all had fun. Every other boy in the neighborhood who spotted that bullwhip wanted to try it, so there’s that.
To this day, “Raiders” is still my favorite movie ever.
“From” Season 2 (2023) wasn’t quite as good as Season 1. The show borrows so much its obvious inspiration, “Lost” (2004-2010), that it also inherits that program’s central flaw — an overabundance of mysteries that confuse the narrative.
Season 1 was … mostly a self-enclosed, tidy horror tale that was reminiscent of the various iterations of “The Twilight Zone” — waylaid travelers in a mysteriously inescapable town are stalked by supernatural monsters. Smaller mysteries were peppered into the plot, and for me those story points were mostly just distracting — but it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the show.
Season 2, however, introduced so many subplot mysteries that the story sometimes became a little difficult to follow. (Or are they really subplots? We’re now shown that the monsters of Season 1 are only one element of the supernatural landscape that our protagonists must survive.)
My complaint above should be taken in context, though — “From” is still the scariest show on television. It’s got some really good writing and some terrific characters, with a few standout actors that hit a home run every time they’re onscreen. One is David Alpay as a the group’s hilarious, antisocial genius; another is Scott McCord as a gentle giant with the mind of an eight-year-old boy.
“From” is still an amazing watch. The second season wasn’t perfect, but it was still great. It remains the show that I am surprised that so few people are talking about.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
— excerpt from Maya Angelou’s “Come and Be My Baby”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 