Stranger Things

So Stranger Things was a show that really came out of no where. It showed up mid July and I didn't really hear about it until the end of the month. But when I heard about it, I heard about it from EVERYONE! Everyone watched Stranger Things and was amazed by the mystery, the casting, just the weirdness of it. Usually I don't fall so quickly for something like this, I usually let these shows come to me when their times come. But Stranger Things was a show that knocked on my door and it knocked hard. In fact, half the reason I blazed through the last few episodes of Daredevil was so that I could get to Stranger Things. But in the end, how does this show fare?

Stranger Things has a very suspenseful beginning with a young boy named Will (played by Noah Schnapps) riding home from hanging out with his friends Mike (played by Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (played by Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (played by Gaten Matarazzo) when suddenly he sees something and with a quick flash, vanishes.

Will's mother, Joyce (played by Winona Ryder) is immediately worried about him and reports him missing to the Chief of their city Hawkin's Police, Jim Hopper (played by David Harbour). While at first it just seemed like this is just a case of a missing little boy who might just be lost, things get very strange when a little girl appears in Hawkins with a very short hair cut, wearing only a hospital gown, and has incredible powers. This little girl eventually finds her way to the company of Will's friends where they figure out her name is Eleven (played by Millie Bobby Brown).

Everyone mentioned above, including Will's older brother Jonathan (played by Charlie Heaton) and Mike's older sister Nancy (played by Natalia Dyer), suddenly experience (excuse the pun) strange things happening around them, all while a shady organization hides in the background, obviously hiding more of what's going on behind the walls of their shady facility.

And honestly, that's all I can say without giving any spoilers.

Believe me, all I want to do is say everything that is going on in this show and tell you how amazed I was by the creativity and the structure of it all, but I can't give specifics because this show is so well crafted, you really have to experience for yourself.

The first thing I can say is that if you're looking at all the names of the cast and wondering what the hell they've all been in, the answer is, they haven't been in much. Yeah, a lot of them don't even have their own page on Wikipedia. A lot of their IMDB pages have this and maybe one other thing. But this show will definitely be a kickstarter for a lot of these young actors because they really kill it. From Finn Wolfhard playing Mike, the sympathetic nerd who is the leader of the young boys, all the way to Natalia Dyer as Nancy, the suburban teenage girl looking to rebel.

The funny thing is I watched this show just after I did my review for The Sandlot and I mentioned how good I thought the kid actors were. But the difference is, I thought those kids were bad actors in a movie where it didn't really matter for them to be good actors or not, they just needed to act like kids. Stranger Things has a similar concept. These kids don't necessarily need to be great because they just need to act like kids. The difference though is that this show is a lot darker and they need to act in dangerous situations and with a little bit of drama. And these kids nail it. And its not just that they're good actors, their characters are also fantastic in the context. Overall, this is just a good choice of child actors ranging from elementary/middle school kids, all the way up to high school kids.

And then you have the better known actors like Winona Ryder and David Harbour. The last thing I saw David Harbour in was A Walk Among The Tombstones where he was a serial killer. I've always seen him as a tertiary actor, not really having too much of the pizazz to carry on his own show or movie. And then I looked back at his filmography and he actually has a filmography full of shows that I really have enjoyed. Furthermore, he kills it in this season just making me want to see more of him.

And then there's Winona Ryder...

I will say one thing about Winona Ryder. She plays a woman who you question whether or not she's going insane very well. I mean I understand, a mother who is missing her son and has strange things happen to her throughout the entire season is going to be worried, she's going to be frantic, and she's going to seem like she's going a little nuts. But it kind of felt to me like Winona Ryder was playing one note the entire time. And what I've seen from Ryder, its always the pouty, whiney child.

Now that's not to say she did a horrible job in Stranger Things. It does help that her character is written well and I think Ryder gives a decent enough performance, I just saw a lot of the same from her. Maybe its a personal preference, but she wasn't my favorite part of the show.

Again, I really wish I could explain more about Stranger Things. The show makes so many omages and takes a lot of inspiration from 80's science fiction movies and if you're a fan of those movies, or are even aware of the style I'm talking about, you're really going to enjoy Stranger Things.

My biggest praise of the show is just the creativity and ability to do something totally different than what is out there already. Science Fiction can be difficult to do, you ride a very fine line between doing something that is far fetched of course but isn't too far fetched that it can't be taken seriously. While there is a little bit of human humor in Stranger Things, the show takes itself seriously enough to a point where I can sit and watch this show, be invested in the characters, and be taken away by imagination.

There are a lot of questions that went unanswered by the end of the first season and it really makes me itch for more. Apart of me kind of wishes that Stranger Things would be a little bit like a Twilight Zone sort of show where each season is a new idea based in the same reality and universe with all the "Strange Things" that happen, but then I think about all the great characters, all the cliff hangers we see in certain story arcs, and I get really excited for what The Duffer Brothers can give us in the second season.

So while this is a lot shorter of a review than I wanted it to be, in order to keep any spoilers from coming, just watch the first season of Stranger Things and let me know your thoughts. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as your requests for any movies or shows I should be reviewing in the future. Also, if you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on more movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

And a personal plea I guess, I'm looking for more shows/movies like Stranger Things to hold myself over until the second season. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know on Twitter.

I'll leave you with this. So Netflix decided to do their first 360 experience YouTube video and Stranger Things was the show they decided to use. Enjoy!