Stranger Things, Season 1, Episode 1: the Vanishing of Will Byers
I'm not sure if I'll finish this series, but the first episode certainly makes a good case for it. (Oh, Happy Halloween, by the way! Here's your requisite horror fiction review). Stranger Things is a horror series released last year on Netflix (just like many other series), and I got to watch a couple of its episodes last night. It stars kids as its main characters, which is sometimes a rather iffy proposition. Child actors are either annoying as all hell (and this can boil down to either actor capability or poor scripting) or charming. I'm not entirely decided yet, but I do think that the cast of four geeky kids playing a D&D campaign is more on the charming side. Perhaps its bias, because I've been getting into D&D myself, but hey. (Also, kids, it's not a Demogorgon. D&D Demogorgon is the name of a demon prince, not a species of monster!)
But the show's charming enough as far as I've seen, and the 80's Indiana town setting is likewise pretty fun. It's only eight episodes long for a Netflix show, which is also relatively welcome length-wise for a quick little romp.
I do love any sort of horror that doesn't actually rely on jump scares to be scary, but rather on atmosphere. Stranger Things is a master at this, although the first episode is a pretty slow burn into this strange world. We follow two plotlines -- one involving a mute girl running from what appears to be government agents, and a second plotline featuring the titular disappearance of Will Byers. Will's disappearance is pretty cool, where we don't actually see what abducted him, but a combination of the dread that his family and friends feel, as well as the actual scene of his disappearance -- using tropes like the barking dog or playing with light or the perpetually-offscreen monster effectively, the show does make Will's appearance and its aftermath pretty harrowing. In fact, I feel that much of the horror comes from his mother and brother not really knowing what the fuck is going on with him. That scene with the little forest hideout is definitely well done.
The other kids -- Mike, Lucas and Dustin -- are mostly your archetypal identikit geeks that spend ten hours playing D&D, geeking out over old-style radios and being bullied by jackasses in school. They are confused at where Will has gone, and that's about it as far as setup goes. We get to meet Mike's sister Nancy who's keeping her teenage hormones and her boyfriend's sex drive in check, which isn't a sub plot I'm particularly enthused about.
11 is the other side of the story. I think she came from the weird Hazmat government facility with that mass of weird goopy tentacle web thing? Or is that unrelated to 11? Regardless, she befriends a deli owner who's a nice dude that assumes 11 is an abused kid who ran away from home, but his attempt to call Social Services is interrupted by a government assassin. We don't actually get to see why 11 is so scary, just where she came from, and that she can kill two grown men offscreen.
A good chunk of the episode is just honestly showing the police sheriffs looking for the missing Will, and the three kids sneak out of home to help out, because kids. Upon which they meet 11. That's where we end in this episode, and, well, I've watched a couple more episodes that I'll talk about in subsequent days. We'll see if I continue to like this show enough.
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