The only way you won’t have heard of Stranger Things is if you’ve been living in a cave. Or maybe you just don’t spend as much time on social media as I do. Either way, this remake of a 1980s blockbuster is probably the biggest thing to hit Netflix since Making a Murderer. Strongly reminiscent of Super 8, the 2011 Spielberg film, Stranger Things features four kids and their families who get inadvertently mixed up in a conspirator’s dream- an alien attack that is mysteriously linked to a governmental psychological testing centre.
Combining an 80s nostalgia with enough tension to hold the viewers’ attention interspersed with light-hearted comic characters makes this show verge on 5 stars. However, perhaps it is the fantastical, and somewhat ridiculous, plot that draws some of the potential tension away from this show. It cannot be doubted that the Duffer Brothers have nailed the periodisation of the show, and the contemporary viewer is whisked back to the 1980s. But in the same way that watching television made in the 1980s holds little fear factor for today’s viewers, Stranger Things just isn’t that scary.
Image: Global Panorama on Flickr