Is there a season two? They certainly didn’t miss a chance to cough up an opening for another season.
-Tom
I loved it, but like so many horror movies/stories/shows etc., the final episode felt perfunctory, like a rush to check off empty tick boxes on a clipboard.
Only on episode 2. I am truly enjoying the 80’s nostalgia, far more than JJ’s hollow attempt in Super 8. Really digging the early Firestarter similarities. One of the first ‘adult’ novels I read as an 11 year old. I’ve never re-read it, but I still have vivid memories.
The blood trickling from 011’s nose when she ‘pushed’ the door shut was straight out a lift of the father in Firestarter.
Stephen King, based on his twitter, seems to appreciate the show and took similarities as a compliment.
The Duffer Brothers openly admit that King is an inspiration for many of the scenes with Eleven.
Considering they plastered a big fat picture of him onscreen to go with a gratuitous Cujo reference, that’s no surprise! They’re nothing if not blatant about their nods. :)
-Tom
Watched the entire thing this weekend.
I’m of two completely separate minds on it: as I said, I watched the whole thing, so it wasn’t unwatchable. But I found it pretty clumsy: the writing was one big 8-episode cliche. The level of pandering to previous works was obvious from the opening credits–geez, could you steal from Star Wars any harder? The references to Spielberg, Lucas, King, even Rob Reiner were overt, throughout the show. The direction was often clumsy, the acting (especially Winona Ryder) was more aptly called overacting–or even chewing the scenery. The plot was obvious. the subplots pointless.
But I enjoyed the kids, at least the younger ones. Teenage slut and her air-blowed-hair boyfriend can both die in a fire. And the sheriff, while still a walking cliche, at least did a good job with what he had to work with. The Don Knotts deputy twins, not so much.
Did two of these four kids being chased by the evil bad nogoodnik types not even have parents? You’d think under the circumstances in town, they’d have had something to say about their kids being out wandering the town every night after dark.
I guess I can’t say I regret the time put in watching this, but the return wasn’t much.
Yeah, the two teenagers who played Steve’s snobby friends seemed to have taken all their acting cues from studying Rizzo and Kenickie in Grease.
I really liked that the jerk rich boyfriend Steve turned out not to be such a blatant Zapka at the end. He actually grew a bit and became somewhat heroic.
As for the kids wandering around after dark, when I was that age in the 80’s, I spent many a summer night wandering around town on my bike with my buddies. We used to ride out to the coast, (about 20 miles) and back to sleep at one of our houses all the time. As long as we called our parents to let them know which house we were all sleeping at, it was fine. No one gave a second thought to our excursions.
I will say that I was disappointed in the monster. When it came down to it, it was just a mindless boogie-man. I was hoping there was more to it.
Yeah outdoors after dark? All the time in the 1980s for kids. Trust us 80s kids on that one.
Yeah, we were often out after dark unsupervised. This is one of those things that must seem pretty unrealistic to younger generations but that’s pretty much how it used to be.
Yeah I got a chuckle out of the scene where the Mom tells he daughter to “be home by 10” I must have heard that one a million times as a kid.
Really not okay with this. Just for the record.
Seriously. Girl has sex and is a slut, apparently. The guy just has a bad haircut.
I’m halfway through the season as well, and I am really enjoying it. Watching it has made me think of Fringe, '70s and '80s Spielberg and Carpenter, Twin Peaks and Super 8. Edit; doh, and Stephen King of course.
I am not sure why Fringe came to mind, though, Like Adam I am also a big Fringe fan, but except for some diffuse feeling of strange things going on there is not really much similarity. Well, there is of course (spoiler for Stranger Things episode 1-4 and Fringe) both Eleven and Olivia being subject to experiments and such. Hm, maybe that is why I thought of Fringe. I’d say it scratches the oobie-doobie spooky mystery itch, but from a different angle.
I think this show so far seems to be a better and more interesting version of Super 8. The atmosphere in the show is one of the big strengths, and I agree with peacedog that the music sure helps here.
I finished it last night, and it ended pretty well. Didn’t feel unsatisfying or anything.
I’m about halfway through. I liked seeing the kids play D&D (blue box!). It’s been a long time but I want to say that’s how I talked when I was that age.
Do we need a spoiler thread?
I finished it last night too and really enjoyed it, but since I’m new to netflix and the only other Netflix shows I’ve watched have been the marvel shows, I was expecting the “season” to be 12-13 shows and I was about halfway through the 8th episode when I realized this was the finale.
I just finished episode 5 last night. Without spoilers, is season 1’s story-line self-contained & finished by Ep 8? I mean, I’m sure they’ll leave plenty of threads to pull on in anticipation of a follow up, but is the main story arc concluded?
Yes, but like the best cheesy 80’s horror movies, there’s plenty of “?” at the end for a sequel.
Pretty staid ending, but I kinda loved this show. It might be the nostalgia talking, but this was lovingly crafted nostalgia.
I thought the kid who played Dustin (with he missing front teeth) was pretty great. I’ll totally watch a season two.