Stranger Things -a review

Let’s start with a confession: I’m a generation Y kid (or a millennial if you wish). So I'm a big fan of the movies from the eighties. The Goonies, Die Hard, E.T., Close Encounters, Poltergeist, you name ‘em, I love ‘em.

But when, a few years back, J.J. Abrahams made Super 8 –and everybody was tumbling over each other in nostalgic glee- I must admit, I hated it.

That movie got the style and the tone of those eighties movies right but totally failed on a logical story. Terrible; a film feeding on your nostalgia without offering you something to sink your teeth in.

Which brings me to the good news: Stranger Things, to me, is how Super 8 should have turned out. It’s got the style and everything right but it also has interesting characters, great music, and –lo and behold- a rather clever, intriguing story at its core.

You could call it a post-modernistic (or post-post modernistic) series as it happily takes a page out of Quentin Tarantino’s textbook and ‘borrows’ various elements from different movies (you could also call it homage or stealing – I prefer borrowing). 
The first episode alone has plot points from E.T., Twin Peaks, Close encounters and even directly refers to Stephen King and Poltergeist.

Now I shouldn’t praise the story too much – it’s pretty basic. But it’s the characters and the clever use of flashbacks that elevate the tale.

The story

But what can I say about Stranger Things without giving everything away? I don’t think I should share more than what I already knew going in.

Four friends (Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will) find their lives turned upside down when strange things start to happen in their hometown. One of which is the arrival of a young girl who needs help.

That’s all I can say.

Alright one more thing I already knew going in; Matthew Modine plays the villain. Yes! (*that’s me punching the air in a happy motion*). After years playing the goto-good guy in movies like Married to the Mob, Cutthroat Island and Pacific Heights he finally puts on a suit to play the silent big bad government guy. And he’s great at it.

His character, to me, strikes a perfect balance between caring and sociopath –which is obviously a contradiction. So it’s great to see an actor sink his teeth into such a character.  

And that’s the main point I can make about the show: The story might be straightforward but all the character are well written, well rounded and well acted. Two examples:

Logic rules

Stranger Things is a supernatural series. Yet, every single character keeps on making the one logical deduction after the other. So somewhere along the way characters need to shift gear from rational to supernatural and that's done very slowly and believably. The Lucas character -for instance- is quite the voice of reason for a long time before even he cannot deny the strange things going on around town.

Having said that, other characters –without trying to give too much away here- tend to embrace the situation a bit too willingly. I mean: 'going monster hunting with dad's gun' isn't the wisest thing to do. But that’s just an old writing trick of: ‘adults don't believe me anyway’ with a bit of teenage stupidity sprinkled on top. Just like in the ‘80s movie The Goonies or E.T.. A sort of nostalgia in the storytelling.

Should you force me to nitpick I would say that only a handful of characters don’t really work for me. For instance, the older sister character’s storyline, which takes a while to get going. Or het overreacting (bad) boyfriend who has rather cardboard cutout evil friends.

Especially his female friends who are fascinating utter witches. Everybody has this colleague that spreads vile gossips all over the place -now I know what they were like in high school.

But in the grand scheme of things that’s just nitpicking.

Oh, and one more thing: Yes! Taking pictures of half naked girls without their consent is wrong - no matter how difficult your puberty is.

Cleverness rules

The second thing I wish to point out here is how clever each and every character is. Winona Rider’s character, for instance, is delicious to watch as she goes crazy at first and then uses one heck of a smart trick to come to terms with the supernatural and start reasoning normally again. She’s also a tour the force that underlines the saying: ‘Don't get between a mother and her cub’.

But all the characters are clever. The police officer, the main children, the cook from the diner. Each are written as great individual characters that might get frightened a bit by the stranger things going around but are smart enough to go looking for answers.

Toothless (Dustin), to me, was hilarious. All I would ever want in a son.  And why didn’t I have Mr. Clark for a science teacher?

Oh, and kids swear in this movie - thank God they swear. Finally kid characters on TV are acting normal again.

Nostalgia all over the place

Writing

But there’s a reason why this series takes place in the ‘80s. For the writing part it allows to ‘homage’ various movies and (popular in the ‘80s) plot elements like: teenage stupidity, bad parenting (parents not knowing where their kids are half the time), evil government-suits and the supernatural events.

Due to this you, the viewer, find yourself on a comfortable seesaw balancing between ‘seen this before’ and ’cool how they handled that known trope’. And that’s a tricky balance to strike because I honestly believe that Super 8 failed in that department. Stranger Things however passes with flying colors.

Directing

For the directing part it also allows ‘homage’. This movie doesn’t pull off any Alfonso Cuaron camera trickery or tries to reinvent the wheel too much. Instead it uses classic framing of shots. Wherein certain shots seem to be lifted directly from classics. 

I for one believe that ‘the ambulance’-crane shot in the final episode is a direct reference to Die Hard. But I must admit, without confirmation, I cannot state this for a fact. The same basically goes for things like backlighting (Poltergeist), a dolly shot of characters sitting (The breakfast club) and obligatory spinning bike wheel (the Goonies, E.T.). All these cinematic tricks ‘feel’ as if they were used to emphasize the ‘80s vibe.

Set design

But the most fun of Stranger Things has to be in the set design. The production team went full tilt with ‘80s products. Just to name a few:  Dungeons and dragons, The dark crystal, the thing, Poltergeist, Jaws, E.T., Rambo, Stephen King, (obligatory) Rubrics cube, waffles and the fantastic Pink dress plus eighties white socks combo.

Everything down to the title fonts is coated deeply in eighties nostalgia and that makes it one heck of a fun ride. Because you can actually re-watch it just to find all those little Easter eggs hidden in the background.

Music

And then of course there’s the music. If you set a story at a certain time you’d better insert some music from that time. And I must admit, to my surprise, I found out that I’m actually quite knowledgeable about ‘80s music. But Stranger Things already stole my heart when they played this song. 

I always connected that song with this (favorite) animated short. Now that I have a reason to post it, I might as well.

Nitpicks

Are there nitpicks? Sure, some. But there’s a side note here: when I’m bench watching a series I tend to become a bit critical around the sixth episode. So it could be me, or I could be right, when I say that the sixth episode is the weaker of the bunch.

For starters episode six has some bad acting. Both kids and adults. Not really bad, per se; but scenes that would have worked better if the camera focused a bit more on the receiving end of a dialog instead of letting the actor play it all out in one take. It stresses the performance a bit too much- it makes it ‘stage like’.

The best way to explain it is the 'are you talking to me'-speech in Taxi driver. Seeing it out of context and only this scene makes it very difficult for a actor to perform it believably.

Luckily DeNiro did just that in that movie. But more than enough amateur actors fail. A trick of solving this reliance on the performance would be to intercut the scene a bit with shots of the receiving end (in the case of Taxi driver the mirror). But that wasn't really needed in the Taxi driver example. It was sometimes needed in episode six. But as I said, it’s nitpicking.

Then there’s the over explaining that happens in a later episodes. I didn’t really see any need for that. But, to be critical about myself too, I might have seen a bit too many movies.

Anyway, these are all nitpicks in a well crafted (horror) series. 

Where to go from here?

The series ends slightly open ended (not much though). So on the one hand I truly, really want a sequel - on the other it's already a rather great series as a one off. So I’ll leave that for Netflix to decide.

All I can say is that this is the show to watch in the eight days before Christmas. Enjoy one heck of a ride and dive headfirst in the fascinating time of the ‘80s and the stories we used to tell.