Just finished watching Strang
er Things on Netflix, and it is fantastic. By now you’ve probably heard that it is a nostalgic throwback to 1980’s cinema, and you’ve probably heard people name-drop Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and John Carpenter when describing it. This is all true; we have a host of Speilbergian characters, a plot that could have come from a King or Koontz novel, and a score that Carpenter could have written. Even the title font is lifted directly from those Signet paperbacks that crowded the rack on the corner drugstore circa 1985. But leaving it at that (as awesome as that description is) is really selling this series short.
First off, the series works on its own terms even if you could care less about the nostalgia factor. The acting is stellar on all counts, especially the kids’ ensemble. You care about all these people and what they’re going through. Second, while some critics might complain about the plot being simple, derivative, and “stuff we’ve seen before,” that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most of the story beats in Lethal Weapon were already well-worn by 1987. Halloween’s story can fit on a postcard and leave room to list the cast and crew. Tarantino’s complete oeuvre is derivative of classic 70’s exploitation films. Stranger Things takes a basic story, a host of genre tropes, and a deep knowledge and affection for a particular era of filmmaking, and executes it so well that one half-expects the show to be followed by a VH1 “Where-are-they-now” documentary focusing on the child actors, now in their forties. I’d go one further and say that, unlike Tarantino’s work, Stranger Things fits seamlessly amongst is influences, less as a modern child, and more as a belated-but-contemporary sibling.
Also, those who critique the tropes and homages miss one of the more impressive bits of writing alchemy here. This isn’t just one story, but three distinct stories braided together. Or, really, the same story from three different points-of-view and three different genres. You have the Speilbergian kids story where they take in the “alien” stranger who might have a connection to their missing friend. You have the adults, the grieving mother and the alcoholic Sheriff, caught in a government conspiracy over sinister Cold-War CIA experiments reminiscent of early King, Firestarter in particular. Then you have the teens caught in a monster movie/creature feature that bears more than a passing similarity to A Nightmare on Elm Street. All three levels work and the plot gears mesh seamlessly. When the separate braids join up in the end, there’s no question that all the story parts hang together. If you want a case study in how to successfully mash-up an arbitrary number of diverse story elements into one work, Stranger Things couldn’t be a better example.
IMHO, this is the best thing to come out of Netflix since Jessica Jones.