Stranger Things (originally Montauk[2]) is an American science fiction psychological horror-thriller[3] web series created by The Duffer Brothers. It was written and directed by Matt and Ross Duffer and executive produced by Shawn Levy.[4]
| Stranger Things | |
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| File:Stranger Things tv spot.jpg | |
| Genre | |
| Created by |
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| Starring |
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| Composer | Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Production | |
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| Production locations | Jackson, Georgia[1] |
| Running time | 47-51 minutes |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | Netflix |
| Release | July 15, 2016 |
The show is set in 1980s Indiana, where a young boy vanishes mysteriously, and a telekinetic girl appears, who helps the boy's friends find him.[5][6]
The show was released by Netflix on 15 July 2016. It was met with rave acclaim by reviewers and critics, and was praised for its characterization, pacing, atmosphere, acting, and homage to 1980's Hollywood.
Synopsis
On 16 November 1983 in Indiana, 12-year-old Will Byers instantly vanishes. Around the same time, a girl with a shaved head appears, showing to have psychokinesis and telepathy. Will's mother, Joyce, becomes frantic and tries to communicate with Will, while Police Chief Hopper investigates deeper personally. All at once, something dark and evil unexplained is out, and vengeful.
Cast
- Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers[7]
- David Harbour as Chief Jim Hopper[7]
- Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler[2]
- Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven[2]
- Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson[2]
- Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair[2]
- Noah Schnapp as Will Byers[2]
- Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler[2]
- Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers[2]
- Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler[8]
- Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner[9]
- Ross Partridge as Lonnie[10]
Episodes
Season 1 (2016)
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers" | The Duffer Brothers | The Duffer Brothers | July 15, 2016 | |
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In a laboratory run by the U.S. Department of Energy, a scientist is taken by an unseen force. A 12-year-old boy, Will Byers, goes missing after witnessing a strange creature on his bike ride home. After Will goes missing, a young girl appears at a restaurant wearing a hospital gown and shaved head. The owner calls the authorities and a woman arrives, saying she is a social worker. She immediately shoots him, and the young girl runs away from the restaurant. Will's friends Lucas, Mike and Dustin find her in the woods during a storm. | |||||
| 2 | "Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street" | The Duffer Brothers | The Duffer Brothers | July 15, 2016 | |
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Lucas, Mike and Dustin take the girl back to Mike's house. There, she reveals her name is 011 by showing Mike a tattoo on her arm. At Will's home, Joyce, his mother, reveals she received a phone call from Will. Shortly afterwards, her phone shorted out. Scientists from the Laboratory, eavesdrop on a phone call between Joyce and Florence, police dispatcher. Afterwards, they go to Joyce's home in Hazmat suits and radiation detectors and see a substance oozing from the walls. Back at Mike's home, Mike and 011 (El for short) sees Will's picture and points him out. When Lucas and Dustin show up at Mike's house and threaten to tell his Mother about her, she reveals she has telekinesis. While searching for Will, Chief Hopper discovers a tag of clothing (from El's hospital gown) in a large drain pipe, leading to the Laboratory. Nancy, Mike's sister, goes to a party at her boyfriend, Steve's, home. Meanwhile, in the woods Jonathan, Will's brother, is taking pictures where Will's bike was found. Upon hearing screams, runs into the forest and sees Steve, Nancy and friends, hanging out near the pool. Shortly afterwards, Barbara, Nancy's friend, alone outside, goes missing. Joyce receives another phone call from Will and starts hearing music coming from his room. Then she witnesses something trying to come through her walls. After running out, she goes back in when she hears more music. | |||||
| 3 | "Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly" | Shawn Levy | Jessica Mecklenburg | July 15, 2016 | |
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Barbara wakes up at the bottom of the empty pool covered in black roots. A tall, gray creature is seen in the pool with her. As she climbs out, the world around her is completely different. Everything is dark, gray and everything is covered in black roots. Nancy notices Barbara is missing. Chief Hopper goes to the Laboratory to speak to someone but the guard tells him to speak to Rick Schaffer. After some insistence, the guard lets him through. After he leaves, it is revealed that the black roots or root-like substance is growing inside the lab. While at Mike's home alone, El has a flashback to being in the Lab. She's hooked up to a machine that monitors brain waves and is seen crushing a can with telekinesis. Shortly afterwards, her nose starts bleeding and the men behind the glass are smiling at her. Joyce goes to the store and buys a cart full of Christmas lights and goes home to set them up around her home, thinking it might help her talk to Will. At the library, Chief Hopper and his deputies are doing research into the Lab. He pulls up information regarding Dr. Terry Brenner and another woman who says her daughter went missing and it was the Scientists and the Lab who took her. El leaves Mike's house and is repeating the phrase, Three-One-Five, 3:15, when she's supposed to meet the boys, when she has another flashback. Attached to the brain wave machine again, she is forced to try and hurt a cat. When she refuses, Dr. Brenner has her put in solitary confinement. She starts screaming and calling him Papa. Before they can close the cell door, she kills two guards telekinetically and Dr. Brenner calls her "incredible." Joyce begins talking to Will through the Christmas lights, lighting up once for yes, twice for no. Will "tells" her he isn't safe. She paints the alphabet on the walls and strings lights up to receive messages from Will, who spells out that he is "right here" and that she needs to "run." Chief Hopper tries telling his deputy that he believes Dr. Brenner is responsible for Will's disappearance when he receives a call over the radio. El leads the boys to Will's house and says that he's hiding there. Lucas, Dustin and Mike don't understand and accuse her of lying. | |||||
| 4 | "Chapter Four: The Body" | Shawn Levy | Justin Doble | July 15, 2016 | |
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After following the police, the boys arrive at the quarry and see Will's body being pulled from the water. Mike, upset with El, runs off. In his basement, while yelling at El, she manages to make contact to Will using Mike's comm radio, and they hear him singing The Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go". Upon further discussion, the boys think Will is stuck in the "Vale of Shadows", a place of death and decay, a dark echo of a place. The following morning, Mike calls Lucas and Dustin over to his home and they decide to head to Mr. Clarke and use his Ham Shack radio. After arriving at the school, the boys run into Mr. Clarke and are forced to attend an assembly regarding Will's death. Overhearing Troy, a class bully, and his friend laughing, Mike confronts them and pushes Troy. When Troy is about to attack, El, using her powers, stops him and makes him pee his pants. Back in Mr. Clarke's room, the boys are able to make contact with Will. They overhear him talking to his mother saying he's afraid and the place he's in is dark and cold. At the same moment, Joyce, Will's mother, hears him through her living room wall and begins tearing at the wallpaper, revealing a flesh-like substance on the wall. On the other side she sees Will talking to her. Shortly after, she tells him to run when she hears the creature coming and grabs the axe to break through. After making a hole, it only reveals her front porch and Will is gone. Chief Hopper, after confronting the State Trooper who found Will's body, goes to the morgue. Using a knife he confirms the body is just a stuffed mannequin and heads off to Hawkins Laboratory. | |||||
| 5 | "Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat" | The Duffer Brothers | Alison Tatlock | July 15, 2016 | |
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After Will's funeral, the boys speak to Mr. Clarke regarding different dimensions. He explains that inter-dimensional travel isn't possible because humans aren't capable of creating the massive amount of energy needed. Theoretically, however, you would have to create a tear in space and time, then create a gate to allow passage. Upon returning to Mike's basement, Dustin discovers that none of the compasses point to True North. According to Mr. Clarke, if the gateway was created, it would disrupt the magnetic fields of the surrounding area. Dustin, remembering this, reveals it to Mike and Lucas, saying if they follow their compasses, it should lead them to the gateway. During the search however, El has a flashback of her time in the Laboratory. It reveals she was weighted down and put in a water tank in order to get information from a Russian man and relay it back. While there, she comes across the creature and it gives chase. In the present, El uses her powers in order to direct the boys back home. When confronted by Lucas, Mike defends her and they begin to fight. Seeing this, El uses her powers to knock Lucas away and he hits his head. Afraid, she runs away. Nancy and Jonathan decide to search for the creature on their own, using his house, Steve's house and where they found Will's bike, to triangulate the creature's position. While searching in the woods, Nancy and Jonathan find a wounded deer and are about to euthanize it, when an unseen force drags it away. Upon following the trail of blood, Nancy comes across a hole in a tree with blood inside. After entering, she exits and sees the creature feasting upon the dead deer. After stepping on a root, the creature senses her and gives chase. After hearing her screams, Jonathan finds her bag near the tree, but can't find her. He runs off to look for her as the hole in the tree starts to close. | |||||
| 6 | "Chapter Six: The Monster" | The Duffer Brothers | Jessie Nickson-Lopez | July 15, 2016 | |
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Jonathan manages to pull Nancy back through the hole in the tree, saving her from the creature. Nancy is terrified and unable to sleep, and asks Jonathan to stay with her that night. Steve, dropping by the Wheeler house for another surprise visit, sees Jonathan and Nancy together through her bedroom window. Jonathan joins Nancy in her bed, though nothing more takes place between them. The next day they resolve to hunt and kill the monster themselves, purchasing ammunition and bear traps from an army surplus store. However, before they can embark on their mission, Nancy is distracted by a defaced movie theater with graffiti calling her a slut. She finds the culprits, a jealous Steve and his friends, and the confrontation escalates into a fist fight when Steve insults Jonathan's family. The cops arrive, arresting Jonathan. Joyce and Hopper investigate further after realizing the child's room Hopper saw in the Laboratory compound could not have been Will's. They track down Terry Ives, a woman who claimed her daughter was abducted by the government. She is revealed to be El's biological mother, who underwent MK Ultra training while pregnant with her. El (nee Jane Ives) was confiscated by Dr. Brenner and his agents, with a cover story that Terry miscarried. Mike, Lucas and Dustin are still unable to reach an agreement about El, as Lucas wants to forget her and focus on finding Will. He parts ways with Dustin and Mike again after a failed attempt to reconcile, following the compass alone to the Hawkins Laboratory while Mike and Dustin search for El in the woods. El, now alone, misbehaves, stealing waffles from a local grocer and shattering the door on an employee when he tries to follow her. Flashbacks reveal that while on her reconnaissance mission, El accidentally opened the gate between the normal world and the "Upside-Down", allowing the monster through. While searching for El, Mike and Dustin are ambushed by bullies from school. Holding Dustin at knifepoint, they demand that Mike jump off of a cliff into a lake, which would almost certainly be fatal. Mike jumps, but is saved by El, who causes him to levitate. The bullies are scared off, and El, Mike and Dustin all reconcile. Meanwhile Dr. Brenner discerns the identity of Mike after listening in on his radio contact with Will, and sends agents to his house to find El there. Lucas sees these agents leaving the Laboratory and realizes where they are going, just as Mike is returning home with Dustin and El. | |||||
| 7 | "Chapter Seven: The Bathtub" | The Duffer Brothers | Justin Doble | July 15, 2016 | |
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Lucas warns Mike over the radio that Brenner and his men are coming for El. Mike, Dustin and El flee the house just as they arrive, and narrowly escape with Lucas. El flips a van to facilitate their getaway. After reaching their hideout in a junkyard, Lucas finally reconciles with Mike and El. Joyce and Hopper find Jonathan with Nancy at the station, and he reveals his knowledge of the creature and portals to his mother. The four of them contact Mike and rendezvous with him at the junkyard, formulating a plan to use El's powers to find Will and Barbara in the Upside-Down dimension. They create a functioning sensory deprivation bath in the middle school gymnasium, which El uses to astral project. She finds Barbara dead, partly eaten by the monster, and Will alive, hiding in the Upside-Down version of his fort in the woods, "Castle Byers". Hopper and Joyce attempt to break into the Hawkins Laboratory to access the portal and save Will, but are apprehended by security guards. Nancy and Jonathan resolve to renew their attempt to kill the monster, and steal their hunting gear back from the police station. In the Upside-Down, a severely weakened Will is shown singing to himself in Castle Byers, when the monster arrives and breaks in. | |||||
| 8 | "Chapter Eight: The Upside Down" | The Duffer Brothers | The Duffer Brothers | July 15, 2016 | |
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Joyce and Hopper are detained in the Hawkins Laboratory and interrogated by Brenner. Hopper negotiates a deal, that he will give up El's ___location if he and Joyce are allowed to enter the dimensional portal and find Will. Brenner, assuming they will be killed in the Upside Down, agrees to these terms. Joyce and Hopper enter the portal in Hazmat suits, travelling extensively through the Upside Down world, and discover the creature's nest, where it keeps its prey to be drained and fed upon. They find Will with a slug-like tube down his throat, feeding on him, and manage to free and revive him. Nancy and Jonathan turn the Byers home into a death trap for the monster, then cut their hands to attract it to their blood. As they wait, Steve unexpectedly arrives, intending to talk to Jonathan man-to-man about their fight over Nancy. As the three argue, the monster attacks. A totally disoriented Steve still manages to fight the monster with a spiked bat, catching its leg in a bear trap. Jonathan then lights the monster on fire, but it survives and manages to escape. El and the boys hide out in the middle school. Mike asks El to a school dance, then kisses her. Following Hopper's information, Brenner arrives at the school with a small army of agents. As the kids try to escape they are surrounded by agents including the one who killed Benny the diner owner. El kills the entire group with telekinesis, scrambling their brains and causing them to bleed from the eyes. As Brenner arrives and recovers a weakened El, the monster comes to the school, attracted by the large amount of blood from the dead agents. It kills Brenner and the rest of his men, then corners the kids in a classroom, where El finally seems to kill it, pinning it against a wall with her powers, and both suddenly vanish, presumably teleporting to another dimension. Will is returned home, reuniting with his mother, brother and friends. A time-jump to Christmas shows that Nancy is back together with Steve, but still on good terms with Jonathan. Hopper leaves an Eggo waffle in a box in the woods, possibly as a gift to El, whose whereabouts are still unknown. Will has resumed his Dungeons and Dragons games with Mike, Dustin and Lucas. Returning home to eat dinner with Joyce and Jonathan, he is shown to still be suffering from the aftermath of his time in the Upside-Down, vomiting a small slug-like creature and briefly seeing the world around him covered in black roots and floating ash. It is left ambiguous whether this is just a post-traumatic hallucination, or something more. | |||||
Reception
Stranger Things has received rave acclaim reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the series an approval rating of 90%, based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Exciting, heartbreaking, and sometimes scary, Stranger Things acts as an addictive homage to Spielberg films and vintage 1980s television."[11] On Metacritic, the series has a score of 75 out of 100, based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews.".[12] The series also received a score of 9.3 out of 10 on IMDb.
Public reception gave intense acclaim with many citing the neo-nostalgia, originality of the story, and its strongly-written characters. Shotana Studios gave the show a 9/10, stating that the characters are what make the show "shine." Also noting that the soundtrack is a clear homage to John Carpenter's music of the 1980s. Electronic synthesizer music that gives the show a very "dark and ominous" feel "that sends tingles up your spine." [13]
Ben Travers of IndieWire gave it a "B," writing that in "checking all the boxes in appeasing its predecessors, the new series fails to surprise, even with its last minute twists. That being said, Stranger Things could become the nostalgic favorite of a new generation. Children uninformed of the past may be stricken by the scares and won over by the characters."[14]
References
- ^ "Film Shooting on the Square Next Week". Jackson Progress-Argus. November 17, 2015. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Andreeva, Nellie (August 20, 2015). "Duffer Bros. Netflix Supernatural Drama Series Sets Young Cast, Gets Title". deadline.com. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
- ^ "Netflix's Stranger Things spoiler-free review". Retrieved 17 July 2016.
- ^ "Netflix Orders Supernatural Drama Series From Matt & Ross Duffer, Shawn Levy". Deadline. April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
- ^ "New Netflix drama series 'Stranger Things' to shoot in Atlanta". Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ "Netflix to premiere original series 'Montauk' in 2016". Reuters. April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
- ^ a b Michael Ausiello, Michael (June 15, 2015). "Scoop: Winona Ryder to Headline Untitled Netflix Supernatural Thriller". tvline.com. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
- ^ Petski, Denise (1 September 2015). "Cara Buono Joins Netflix's 'Stranger Things'; Dean Cain In 'Lady Dynamite'". Retrieved 17 July 2016.
- ^ "Netflix's 'Stranger Things' Adds Matthew Modine to Cast (Exclusive)". 27 October 2015. Retrieved 17 July 2016.
- ^ "Ross Patridge Joins cast of Stranger Things".
- ^ "Stranger Things: Season 1". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
- ^ "Stranger Things: Season 1". Metacritic. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
- ^ "Stranger Things (Netflix Series) Season 1 Review (Spoiler Free)". Youtube. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
- ^ Travers, Ben (15 July 2016). "Review: 'Stranger Things' is Still Waiting for Something New, To Make It Feel Alive". IndieWire. Retrieved 17 July 2016.
External links
