Early Friday morning I opened up Netflix as usual to try and find something to watch while doing my makeup. Immediately, I was bombarded with an ad for a new Netflix original series, "Stranger Things", an eight-episode mini-series that had just released at midnight the night before. Staring Winona Ryder as a distraught mother on the search for her missing 12-year-old son, Will, whom disappeared under supernatural circumstances, "Stranger Things" immediately piqued my interest. As an avid fan of the weird, the horrific, and the strange, I started the first episode that morning.
And I was late to work, naturally.
I finished all eight episodes this past weekend after an intense binge session and I still don't fully know how to describe the show. Was it a horror series? Was it science fiction? Was it a coming of age story? Was it a love story? Ryder is joined by several other characters on her search, including her son's three nerdy friends, a gaggle of love-triangled teenagers, a drug-addled cop with a depressing backstory, and a young girl with super powers. It's a mishmash of "The Goonies" "Sixteen Candles," "Lethal Weapon," and "The X-Files" and while that would typically result in a chaotic mess of a show, it works within the 1980s world where "Stranger Things" is set.
The minds behind the series, Matt and Ross Duffer, intentionally created a setting that pays homage to some of the greatest tropes of 1980s cinema without creating a world that is too campy for modern audiences. The first handful of episodes are predictably pandering to this idea, with an overload of old school tropes like walkie-talkies, boys sneaking into bedrooms, and the typical nuclear family narrative. But as the series gets rolling and the science fiction and horror elements start emerging, it's clear that the Duffer brothers are merging two eras together rather than just recreating the tropes from one.
The real winner for this series though belongs to the young actors who played Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and El. These four did such a phenomenal job in their roles that I would argue that they were the best performances in the entire series. Due to strict child labor laws and the extra difficulty in directing child actors, we don't see many television series or movies that give them a lot of screen time or range outside of The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. And with the Disney Channel and Nick we almost never see child actors given the chance to expand their talent with more mature themes and roles. "Stranger Things," however, utilized their talents and really created a series where the best bits of dialogue and performance were coming from 12-year-olds.
Overall, "Stranger Things" is a unique piece of work from Netflix and it's told with love and passion for the movies and television that brought us here. A little bit of Spielberg and a little bit of King, "Stranger Things" is the fun, shocking, thrilling 80s throwback that the world has been waiting for. Basically, equal parts scary and nostalgic.
Now, excuse me while I go dig out my old VHS of "The Goonies."
