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Stranger Things

Stranger Things
Posted on July 14, 2019

Stranger Things Season 3 Provides More Gore, More Queer, and More Female Fierceness

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Season three of the Duffer brothers’ mega-hit Stranger Things has the fizzy pop feel of a high school rom-com seasoned with heavy dashes of cold war paranoia and splatter-gore grossness of 80s era films. Bowl cuts, bi-levels, and rainbow bright attire are set amidst a sinister Russian operation housed beneath Hawkins’ flashy new Starcourt mall. Extending the series’ admixture of horror and sci-fi elements, the new season regales viewers with exploding rats, human bodies turned into melted piles of blood-tinged gloop, and a gigantic excrement-hued monster.

The season, like the previous two, nods extensively towards iconic horror and sci-fi films. This intertextual aspect of the series, which includes enough Easter Eggs to make even the most avid egg-hunter happy, is most extensively informed by works from Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and James Cameron. Yes, that’s right, all dudes.

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Posted on November 10, 2017

Eighties Nostalgia in Stranger Things

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In recent horror, eighties nostalgia has seemingly reached a fever pitch. The cinematic remake of the 90’s television miniseries based on the Steven King novel It (2017) noticeably shifts the timeframe of the original story from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. In fact, the film goes out of its way to remind viewers of 80’s sights and sounds, particularly the decade’s movies. In one scene, the camera passes over the lone movie theatre of the small town whose marquee promotes:  Lethal Weapon 2, Batman, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. However, the binge-worthy Netflix series, Stranger Things, takes its love of 80’s film even further. A poster for the decade’s remake of The Thing (1982) appears on a wall in a character’s home, and in the second season, the boys all dress up as characters from the Ghostbusters movies. But more than that, the series employs elements of 80’s movies so much so that they become crucial to the series’ plot. Is this just lazy script writing or is something else at work here?

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Posted on July 28, 2016

Review: Stranger Things (Netflix)

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There’s a good reason your millennial friends and family have been obsessively posting about Netflix’s latest original series, Stranger Things, on social media. The Duffer Brothers, credited both with writing and directing, know how to tap into the nostalgia market. They want you to watch the series and fondly remember everything you loved about being afraid as a kid. The show doesn’t just take place in the 80s; it looks like it was filmed in the 80s. From the music, to the retro title font, to the grainy filters, the Duffer Brothers have done for VHS horror movies what Tarantino and Rodriguez did for grindhouse films of the 1970s. The storyline, too, culls from a whole host of horror, sci-fi, and cult classics that millennials grew up watching at sleepovers, including Poltergeist, Alien, Firestarter, It, The Goonies, and ET. Read more

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