'From: Season 3 Episide 8' Review: It's a better episode than the others at least

I haven't been enjoying From's third season. Season two was already a big change that took away some of the horror elements in pursuit of some additional character development but that was something to be expected. Season three stood up and said fuck everything by going full slog. A season so painfully stretched out that it feels like its current eight episodes of the season could be condensed down into three with all the filler removed. It's rare for me to consider a show to have filler, particularly when character development is such an important thing to have in a show riddled with mystery, but this character development has been thin, mostly delegated to small aspects of the episodes to which something happens either at the start or towards the end of the episode. The rest being characters just not really doing anything or saying anything of value to each other. From's last episode was a total bore. And I wasn't alone in that feeling with the Internet being riddled with articles on it being the worst episode of the season, and many people saying that the show has just grown too tiresome for them to want to keep investing their time into it. I can understand this fully. This isn't a show that maintains momentum anymore. This isn't a show about the strange and mysterious events that take place within its location. To say it's even a show about drama would be a stretch. From, to say the least, has lost its way.

I feel the need to make it clear that character development is hardly what From has been exploring over this season. For the most part, it is characters roaming around and making no sense as they avoid all communication or simply act like total idiots, removing all logic and reason from their acts. In a town in which people hallucinate and experience strange hauntings, to which none of them are capable of leaving the town, nobody actually talks to each other about these problems. Nobody seems to really discuss the possibilities or share ideas and experiences. The problems here is that their interactions end up being thin, void of direction as idiotic replies lead to stagnation within the story. With the show's directing, these episodes feel like they're stretched with how often characters reject everything around them. Characters will refuse to talk to each other. Excuses are made to stop talking. Or coincidentally something happens at the right time to interrupt their discussion to which the topic is never returned back to its state. So much of the show feels this way to the point of boredom, it's expected. The frustration in the audience is coming from the clear intent to stretch out the story and keep the mysteries from being answered, with constant teasing that just gets annoying rather than immersive. Primarily evident when the characters grow more dumb and, well, out of character. One look at the ratings from the audiences show a strong decline with each episode that has been released. But this eighth episode finally gave us a little bit of something.

It may have taken eight entire episodes of nothing to get to this point, but finally we are starting to see something starting to form. And this was primarily in the pursuit of answers from a few characters as they each finally did something to pursue a bit of context over situations they've been finding themselves in. Elgin continues to be the primary character that actually seems to be pursuing something by being experiencing hauntings from a particular ghostly apparition that claims she can help save them, providing Elgin helps her. With the obtaining of a new polaroid camera, it seems to take photographs at any moment, featuring objects or locations that are giving Elgin direction, first off telling him to go to an underground tunnel, to which it was later used to essentially kidnap Fatima, another character that has been experiencing various oddities as of late with the complexities of her assumed pregnancy. Told she isn't really pregnant while starting to notice strange happenings to her body, as well as murderous rage and a hunger for rotten food. Elgin's directions have also strangely led to him draining his own blood. I'm curious as to whether this strange ghostly apparition is in fact offering help and safety, or simply manipulating Elgin to help her and the rest of the beings pursue some strange agenda.

Elgin's developments came out of nowhere, but they're ones that I have been enjoying more than the rest. Elsewhere, Victor is still attempting to get the doll to talk, and this leads to more oddities that sort of impact the story in a way I don't really like: the introduction of the time travel idea. Julie announces she has voices screaming in her head at all times, but a discovery in the last episode leads to those voices dying down. It ended up being a portal that took her into a location that Boyd was once in during a previous season, and it all loops some things together as Julie is the person that helps Boyd with some rope without knowing. The time travel idea isn't one I thoroughly enjoy, it is something that can be a bit of a lazy way to tell a mysterious story and. The idea that everything is looped and everyone is helping someone indirectly. I'm hoping this isn't something that spreads into something deeper as these final seasons grow closer. And that there is something still rather sinister and mystical about the show. That said, these developments are the largest we've had all season, and it's nice to see that the ball got moving finally with discoveries being made. It's a shame things could not have moved a bit sooner, and areas of the former episodes definitely contained too much filler to keep things stretched out towards the end of the season.

This episode by no means justifies the boring slog the rest of the season has been. I'm definitely not a fan of having this big reveals come at the end of the season while the rest is just a bit of teasing here and there with nothing more. It's a structure that's incredibly tiresome and it seems almost inevitable that this season ends on an insanely annoying cliffhanger. Fortunately this episode was just about enough to keep me in though, if it had been similar to the last, I'm not sure I would've been able to continue.