Stranger Things (2016)
1983: A sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere. When one day a little boy disappears without a trace, the mother of the missing boy Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), is beside herself with worry. Desperate, she turns to police chief Hopper (David Harbour), who, after initial hesitation, initiates a search for the missing Will (Noah Schnapp). Will's friends, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are quick enough to do so. On their own, they try to find their friend and come across the mysterious girl with a shaved head Eleven (Milly Bobby Brown) and dark secrets that should never see the light of day ...
»May you live in interesting times« is a Chinese saying. Well, we live in interesting times. And such interesting times occasionally give birth to a piece of art that pokes its head out of the consumer abundance. We are talking, of course, about the new Netflix series »Stranger Things«. This series is a skillful homage to the three great lords of the American entertainment industry in the 80s: Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and Stephen King. »Stranger Things« smells, tastes and feels as if Spielberg had adapted a book by Stephen King with a score by John Carpenter. Celebrated as a work of genius in America and among the 'normies', it is belittled by representatives of elitist nerd culture like @NormCast and @reeft as a hopeless attempt at revived reminiscence. What the esteemed bloggers don't quite get is the fact that the fireworks of references that »Stranger Things« fires off every minute of its 8 episode first season only serve to make a perfectly legitimate connection between the state of the world in the 80s and the 2010s. The Western world in the '80s was considered just as unsafe and dangerous as today's is perceived by many people. »Stranger Things« articulates these similarities in time levels by having the series mimic this sense of threat in the guise of homage.
This may not be great art in the eyes of some viewers. But I remember well the first times I saw »Back to the Future«, »Ghostbusters« or »Gremlins« in the cinema. I didn't realize at the time that I was witnessing the birth of great cinematic art, but I thought they were really good movies. I didn't know why they were so good, but one of my life's tasks was to find out. The creators of »Stranger Things« may have felt the same way.And if the art of imitation doesn't count for the elitist critics, look to the new form of visual storytelling that 'Stranger Things' creates out of a worn-out format.Den 'Stranger Things' is nothing more than a TV multi-series. But with a special twist. The dramaturgical structure of the 8 episodes strictly follows the cinematic narrative structure. Basically, 'Stranger Things' is an eight-hour feature film. Thus, this film/series hybrid is as suspenseful as a movie, but can give the characters as much depth as a television series.
So maybe we're witnessing the birth of something again, which in 30 years will be classified as the beginning of something big and important.Until then, 'Stranger Things' just sucks and is my absolute recommendation.
