7.16.2016

Television: Stranger Things

This is a little eight-episode series on Netflix, and I was sucked right into it. Not only is it set in the late 70s/early 80s, but it looks like it was made then, too. At my age, Stranger Things hits the nostalgia bone right on its knobby little end.

I'm only two episodes in (no spoilers, please and thank you); would have gone for more but actually had reasons to sleep. I anticipate being finished relatively quickly.

The show has the look and feel of ET or The Goonies with a plot out of The X-Files. A kid named Will disappears in a small town where the police department is ill equipped to deal with such a thing. At the same time, a girl escapes from some kind of government lab, and the lab people (led by Matthew Modine) are on the hunt for her while also apparently aware of . . . some kind of alien creature? That has connections to the Department of Energy (which has a facility near the town)? Or maybe this "alien" is some kind of byproduct of said facility, or of Modine's lab.

It's all done incredibly well, right down to the music cues. Cast perfectly (Wynona Rider as Will's distraught mother, David Harbour as the luckless sheriff) and remarkably well acted, too; the Duffer brothers got some really good stuff from the kids they were working with. In short, I'm eager to continue watching and will be sad when I've finished.

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