Stranger Things - Season One

STRANGER THINGS
Season One
(2016)
Overall: MEH

I have taken the opportunity before while reviewing a new comic book movie to hop on my "wah, I don't like anything anymore" soapbox and bitch about a bigger, overall problem therein.  So now I shall take THIS opportunity to do the same regarding Netflix's Stranger Things.  Meaning, let us talk about the throwback.  No that is not some kind of sexual position that incorporates football wordplay, I am specifically referring to the "horror throwback".  An homage to an earlier era in the genre, be it the spooky haunted house film, (the work of Ty West or We Are Still Here), Gothic horror, (Lady In Black, Crimson Peak), or in this here case, the entire decade of the 1980s.

Sometimes, (but not all the time), these properties are comparatively more void of graphic violence, CGI, and good Satan, at least they are not sequels to long existing franchises.  Though often they may as well be.  The one current throughout them is that they blatantly recall an era that is not the present one, commonly in the storytelling themselves.  They are simpler tales that "throwback" to a time when most commercial horror stuffs were not made with shaky, hand held cameras, were not torture porn, and were not reboots, sequels or both.  This in-and-of-itself is refreshing.

Refreshing like good ole Netflix and their no-chance-of-missing-it product placement.

These movies are deliberately full of ideas from a bygone time.  Ideas that on paper sound appealing.  Shit, they sound appealing to me.  Fuck torture porn and fuck remaking Halloween again.  People generally appreciate that Stranger Things is simply set in the 1980s.  They appreciate the obvious references to Stephen King and Senior Spielbergo, amongst many others.  I appreciate them as well.   "Dude, its totally like a horror version of The Goonies and the music is awesome".  Because '80s and because everybody likes The Goonies and John Carpanter-esque scores.  "Ooo, check out the poster of The Thing on their wall!".  "Ha, rotary phones, remember those?".  "Whoah, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons too!".  In this case, there is a whole lot more of this kinda shit than just that.

Mind you, none of these little nods and winks, good humored references to things people who grew up in this era like, are at all bad.  Even if they are almost overbearing at times, these elements are all still pretty fun.  The problem lies in the fact that all this fun stuff is not enough for me.  It is just not.  Out of all the flourishes of synthesized music, wood-paneling-a-plenty, and no cell phones, all of that on its own makes not a good TV show.  Because all the familiarity that most of my friends and other peoples reviews of Stranger Things generally seem to dig are not limited to non-plot devices.  In layman's terms, the story in Stranger Things is too derivative of way too many things and therefor not particularly great.

Great no.  OK?  Sure.  Stranger Things is OK.  I would never call anything really "bad" in this show.  The worst fucking Clash song of all time "Should I Stay or Should I Go" certainly is, but that is about it.  I love The Clash of course, but for asses sake, goddamn is that song horseshit.  Anyway though, I cannot really call this show anything else but OK.  As is the case, far, far too often with many a form of entertainment, hype very unfortunately stains my enjoyment of it.  If everyone was commonly of the opinion that Stranger Things was borderline a hoot, MAYBE worth eight episodes of ones time, and certainly brings nothing that exciting or new to the table, then that would be some honesty I could agree with.  Maybe I am just a Scooge though and most people actually do like this story and not just tolerate it because hey, the 80s!

Joe Strummer must be spinning in his grave...at how awful that song is.

I cannot speak for everyone.  For myself though, of course I can.  There are many things in Stranger Things that we have all seen a whole lot of before.  The kids are all science nerds and unpopular at school so of course they play D&D and of course there are bullies that pick on them.  The one girl is really pretty and "Little Miss Perfect".  So of course when she goes out with the bad boys, insisting she needs to study the whole time, and partakes of some hanky panky and drinks beer on a school night, of course it is a big deal.  Also of course, her dweeby, not as pretty friend is uncomfortable with this.  Also of course again, the guy she bangs ends up being an asshole.  Also of course again again, ANOTHER unpopular nerd who is a teenager gets picked on and said asshole and him fight.  Then of course said nerd and said Little Miss Perfect have a will-they/won't-they thing that builds while they both deny it.  More teenage drama shit.  More bullies in school shit.  More parents and teachers who are oblivious to their kids skipping school, acting way too suspicious to leave alone, harboring stray kids under their own roof, etc.

Which brings us to Eleven, a human lab rat who can do Jean Grey shit.  Acting the part of a scared little puppy with virtually one facial expression the entire show, (really scared and uncomfortable), she is loaded with superpowers and basically knows exactly what is going on, but barely if at all speaks.  I guess because she does not know a lot of words?  Sure, that.  Her "Papa", (Matthew Modine rocking a David Cronenberg/mad scientist look), is the head of all the shady, secret government-funded science project shit that has been going on long before Eleven was even a thing.  He is basically the poster boy for every reason everything terrible is happening and he is so cartoonishly untrustworthy that no looks of concern for Eleven or tender tone-of-voices can at all disguise the fact that he is absolutely the bad guy.  Plus, everything cool that Eleven can do such as look like a badass while flipping cars over, float things, and stop people dead in their tracks, all of it we can throwback to not only the X Men comics, but Carrie and Firestarter as well.  So there are the Stephen King nods again.

Very sadly, Maximum Overdrive nods are none to be found.

Chief of police Jim Hooper is a pretty well done character though.  Of course he too also has an arc that leaves nothing to the imagination.  His daughter died of cancer so he is a brooding hard-ass now that is hell-bent on being a brooding hard-ass to find Hawkins, Indiana's missing kids.  Yay emotions, because I guess in the past he banged Winona Ryder's character, (mother of the missing Will who no one believes anything she says because skeptics in horror + hysterical woman coping with her loss = must be going crazy).  As a character, Hooper is alright and David Harbour does a fine job portraying him.  Ryder on the other hand is still an on-screen reminder that she is hardly the world's finest actress.  She even makes time to have a funny quip about scoring a pack of smokes when she is buying a phone the second after she breaks down because her son is missing.  Good for her!

I kid cause I love.  Beetlejuice and Bram Stoker's Dracula after all am I right?  There are some other plotholes here or there in Stranger Things that really are not worth picking apart.  "How the hell did Will survive that long in the Upsidedown with no food or water?" per example.  Yet Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy had plotholes too and clearly those movies are stupendous.  So it is all good.  Generally speaking, Stranger Things has very generic, very little grey-area-styled characters and maybe that is what they should be.  Yet when we pretty much have a version of Silent Hill with kid protagonists, some telekinesis/telepathy superpowers on a little girl, nerds/creeps vs. bullies/cool kids garbage, and cool music that sounds like John Carpenter wrote it, all this really equals at the end of the night is "been there, done that".

This is the "horror throwback" folks.  Style over originality basically.  People seem to like it, I do not.  I really wanted to though and always go into such properties with high hopes and a glass-half-full attitude.  Yet time and again, I get disappointed and think to myself, "You know, if I wanna watch E.T. or read Firestarter then I'll just do that".  I really do not see the point in seeing a bunch of things I am nostalgic for thrown together in a blender and presented to me as a breath of fresh air to all the shit people are sick of in this particular genre.  Call me picky for wanting to see more shit we have NOT seen before.  Just think, in a few short decades there will be a TV show that comes out that takes place in a small town investigating some kids who go missing in the woods after they find some "lost" hand held camera footage.  Then everyone who grew up in the late 90's - early 2000's will go, "Oh cool, this reminds me of the Blair Witch except it's a TV show.".

Eh, who the fuck am I kidding?  I would totally watch the shit out of that show.