Admittedly, I’m late to be on the Stranger Things bandwagon when this Netflix hit appeared in July. I was busy getting back into the groove of working, living and other crap which gets us all through the day. José recommended it too which made me a bit reluctant. He’s a pretty savvy television-film viewer (how I wish he would flex his writing muscles writing reviews, he’d be better at it than me); we sometimes just don’t agree on many American cultural touchstones (e.g. Ghostbusters). José has more in common with Somara. To them, a “popcorn movie” is just something that harmlessly kills time. I’m with the Modern Humorist camp, the cliché is code for terrible. Plus, I quickly noticed how T-shirt sites flooded the market with designs based upon the characters/plot. This gives me pause because they also went nuts for Firefly (blech) and Lost (yawn).
Soapbox aside, this miniseries was very impressive. The eye for detail about 1983 was very accurate except for the Midwestern climate. It’s pretty damn cold in November plus I could tell it was shot in the tax haven of Georgia via the trees; many of the outdoor shots can’t normally be done on location with the Midwest.
The premise revolves around a middle-school kid’s disappearance, a nearby Department of Energy/Army installation and the camaraderie of the missing kid’s three geeky best friends. For film nerds and most people born after 1974, Stranger has ET, Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Firestarter, The Fury and Goonies throughout its DNA. This is a great thing actually. The Duffer Brothers inject the mood and elements without making it some horrible Tarantino copy-and-paste “homage.” In short, you get those older movies’ vibe while seeing something more original. They even nail the early Eighties John Carpenter-esque music at the beginning of every episode. There’s also subplots involving the town’s sheriff’s personal history, the missing kid’s family issues/status and one of the friend’s more popular sister dating “high school royalty.”
For me, it is hard to see Wynona Ryder as single mother freaking out over her son’s disappearance. She’ll always be those younger characters in Tim Burton movies in my memory but she did give a plausible performance. The child actors did a fantastic job, especially on how children their age argue and infight. Still, I am in complete agreement with José on Stranger Things. It’s absolutely worth watching. The hardest thing is not to binge watch all eight episodes in one evening if you’ve got chores to do or work the following day.
There’s a second series planned. Let’s see if the Duffer Brothers catch lightning in a bottle next year. I hope they do but it can be hard when the core cast is made up of tweeners. They change rapidly during adolescence.