Wasting time

Every show has that cliche thing when they pretend that large group of people are being stranded somewhere and must get out. But they cant find interesting storyline for 50 characters so they just pick 10 and have them having adventures. And all other just hang out in the background, doing nothing and have no personality. They are basically extras walking in the background. Show only shows them when they need to kill someone so that viewers would be entertained.

At this point its such a cliche that show must stop doing it. Have 12 people being lost and show them. Because its just looks ridiculous like in From.

It’s implied that all of them went through a phase when they first got there wherein they tried to figure out how to escape (eg Jim writes all over his home’s walls). Eventually, they give up hope, so they try to adapt and accept their new dwellings.

There's a lot of colony maintainment that needs to go on: farming, cooking, medical, cleaning and even basic morale etc. That's what most of the unnamed and side characters are doing.

We see this mostly organised by Donna, Kenny's mother, Kristi and Fatima and some others who don't really do any investigating and resistance which is more Boyd's department. The majority of people are not heroes. Most of them are not going to be willing to go off into the spooky forest (and they only have until nightfall) to find answers when it is shown repeatedly that venturing too far can be dangerous.