“From” opens with a map of America that has one town too many, and a family that drives into it. The Matthews family — Tabitha, Jim, and their children Julie and Ethan — are the newest arrivals in a nightmarish town somewhere in middle America that traps everyone who enters. They do not know the rules yet. The residents do, and the rules are simple and terrible: the creatures come out when the sun goes down.
Created by John Griffin, “From” premiered on Epix on February 20, 2022. It ran four seasons and 40 episodes. In April 2026, the series was renewed for a fifth and final season. The premise is a locked-room mystery spread across a whole town, and the show’s best asset is the man who runs it.
Trailer, via MGM+.
Boyd Stevens and the Town That Will Not Let Go
Harold Perrineau plays Boyd Stevens, the self-appointed sheriff and de facto mayor. Boyd keeps the lights on, the food rationed, and the peace held together with a combination of authority and exhaustion. Perrineau is the reason to watch. He plays a man who has decided that normalcy is a discipline, not a feeling, and the performance carries the show whenever the plot stalls.
Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Tabitha Matthews, the newcomer who asks the questions the longtime residents stopped asking. Ricky He is Kenny Liu. David Alpay is Jade Herrera. Chloe Van Landschoot is Kristi Miller. Elizabeth Saunders is Donna, who runs the town’s other faction with a hard pragmatism that makes her the most interesting counterweight to Boyd.
The cast is deep and the show uses it. Hannah Cheramy plays Julie Matthews, Pegah Ghafoori plays Fatima, Simon Webster plays Ethan Matthews, Avery Konrad plays Sara Myers, Julia Doyle plays Sophia, and Samantha Brown plays Dani Acosta. Eion Bailey and Scott McCord appear in main roles.
The Creatures Come Out When the Sun Goes Down
The central mechanic is a curfew written in blood. At night, the creatures leave the surrounding forest and hunt. The residents board their windows, hang their talismans, and wait for morning. During the day, they search the woods and the town for secrets hidden within and beyond, hoping for a way out.
That structure gives “From” its best hours. The show understands that horror works best when it is domestic — a knocked window, a broken talisman, a neighbor who forgot the time. The first season builds this tension carefully, and the second season, which premiered on the rebranded MGM+ in April 2023, expands the map without losing the claustrophobia.
The mystery box is the show’s gamble. Every answer opens two more questions, and “From” is not always in a hurry to close them. That is a feature for some viewers and a frustration for others.
What the Show Gets Right
The performances are the strongest element, and Perrineau’s work in particular has drawn the most attention. He gives Boyd a physical weight — the way he walks into a room, the way he absorbs bad news before he delivers it. The show is at its best when it lets him sit with another character and argue about what survival actually costs.
The direction is consistent. The show shoots the town as a place that is almost normal, which makes the horror land harder. The forest is shot as a wall. The creatures are shot as people, mostly, which is worse.
The writing has a clear thesis: community is a choice you make every day, and it is exhausting. The residents of “From” do not survive because they are brave. They survive because they do the chores, keep the schedules, and forgive each other for the things they did before they arrived.
Where the Mystery Box Slows Down
The problem is pacing. Four seasons and 40 episodes is a long time to hold a premise this thin, and the show spends stretches of its middle seasons marking time. Characters repeat conversations. New arrivals repeat the same discovery. The rules of the town expand faster than the show’s ability to make them matter.
The renewal for a fifth and final season is the right call. A show like “From” needs an ending, and the knowledge that one is coming should sharpen the final stretch.
The other issue is that the show’s best ideas are often its smallest. A talisman. A rope. A decision about whether to tell a child the truth. When “From” reaches for grand mythology, it gets muddier. When it stays in the room with two people who are scared, it is very good.
The Case for Watching “From” Anyway
Here is the ranking of what “From” does well, in order of how much it matters:
- Harold Perrineau as Boyd Stevens. The show does not work without him, and he knows it.
- The curfew mechanic. A simple rule, enforced every night, that never stops being scary.
- The ensemble. Catalina Sandino Moreno, Elizabeth Saunders, and Ricky He give the town a real texture.
- The setting. A middle American town that traps you is a strong image, and the show uses it.
- The mystery. It is the hook, but it is also the weakest part of the machine.
That order is not arbitrary. The show’s reputation rests on its lead performance and its central rule, not on the answers it has yet to give.
Perrineau Carries What the Plot Cannot
Strip away the mythology and “From” is a show about a man doing a job nobody asked him to do. Boyd holds meetings. Boyd rations supplies. Boyd tells people the truth when a lie would be kinder. Perrineau plays all of it without vanity, and the result is the strongest element of a series that otherwise keeps reaching for the supernatural.
The creatures are a premise. Boyd is a person. That distinction is the whole show.
A 6.3 Out of 10, and What That Means
“From” scores 6.3/10. That is a fair number for a show that is genuinely good at atmosphere and genuinely frustrating at structure. The first season is the strongest. The middle seasons stretch. The fifth and final season will determine whether the whole thing holds together.
The published critical score sits at 6.3/10, with a Metacritic score of 63/100. That lands where the show actually lives: above average, below essential, carried by a performance that deserves a better vehicle.
This is the part worth watching. Perrineau’s Boyd is a man who has decided that hope is a chore, and he performs that decision every episode. The creatures are the premise. Boyd is the show. If “From” had trusted that — if it had spent fewer hours on the map and more on the people trapped inside it — the score would be higher.
It is not a great series. It is a good one with a great lead, and in a crowded field of mystery-box television, that is enough to justify the four seasons it got. The final season will decide whether “From” is remembered as a show that stuck the landing or one that kept opening doors until it ran out of rooms.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.