Stranger Things- Season One

 

Until recently, Stranger Things was for me a bit like Game of Thrones; everybody seemed to have seen it except me. A lot of my fellow conspiratorialists kept asking me if I'd watched it and were strongly recommending it to me. My first real introduction to the series, beyond second-hand descriptions, was when I visited the fan shop in Las Vegas USA, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/11/meadows.html. I saw shelves of merchandise that consisted mostly of designer 1980's televisions, radios and other household appliances, together with models of a frightening monster with a head shaped like a flower. My curiosity got the better of me and I eventually ended up watching it. At the current time I have watched the first season and a few episodes of the second. It didn't take me long to understand why Stranger Things is so popular in the Woo-o-sphere. I was also not surprised to learn that when it was in pre-production, its working title was "Montauk". Anybody familiar with that strange period of history at the tip of Long Island USA will recognize the scenario. It has an ensemble cast, but in the first season the central figures are four young boys, aged in their early teens. Despite this fact, the series is definitely aimed at adults and probably some of its horror elements are not suitable for younger viewers. It also addresses subjects like the occult, non-consensual human experimentation, child abuse and mind control by the state, embodied by Eleven. Some of the actors are probably a bit too old for their characters, such as Barb. The setting is a small town surrounded by forest and nearby is a government laboratory; in this sense it is very like Dark, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/12/dark.html; and there are many other plot parallels between the two series. It is also like Dark stylistically; for example there are the same interlude scenes with music and vignettes. The laboratory is a sinister and furtive place with a tense and slightly fearful relationship to the local civilians that reminds me of Alice Spring, Australia and its nearby compound, Pine Gap. There is good reason for this because it turns out that the laboratory has experiments running into supernatural and psychic powers. It ends up opening a portal into a different dimension that they call "the Upside Down". When this portal is opened, all kinds of strange things happen. This element reminds me of Stephen King's The Mist, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/11/mist.html. There are incursions by the denizens of the Upside Down into our world and vice versa. At one point, one of the young boys makes a pet out of a creature from that realm. Another of the boys, Will, is psychologically transformed by his visit to the Upside Down and is compared to Phineas Gage, a railway construction worker who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1848. Gage's friends and family said that although he didn't lose any mental abilities his personality became very different afterwards. Stranger Things is very multi-faceted and on top of all its other elements it is also a nostalgia movie. There are many throwbacks to typical 1980's culture. Simple but fun computer games, Dungeons and Dragons, off-road bicycles; and, in one episode, the four boys dress up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween. From what I've watched so far, Stranger Things is very good and well worth watching. As with Dark, it's best to binge-watch it rather than leaving it and coming back. That way you won't lose track of the complex storyline and multitude of characters. Manifest went downhill in the second season, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/05/manifest.html; I hope Stranger Things doesn't.