Genre-benders
Welcome, Stranger, says Greg Bruce
The last three credits on the first episode of Stranger Things 2 read as follows: “Executive producers: The Duffer Brothers; Created by: The Duffer Brothers; Written and directed by: The Duffer Brothers. The Duffer Brothers, 33-year-old twins with one major project to their names — a movie that went straight to DVD — before last year’s first series of Stranger Things, have created a brand and style so strong, unique and appealing that in just over a year it has put them in the top echelon of televisual film makers. They have created a new genre: the coming-of-age monster-mystery-comedy-horror-thriller-sci-ficonspiracy-melodrama set in the 80s. The Duffers are intense, intelligent students of film, so Stranger Things is, besides all these other things, a pastiche of homages to their favourite film makers, but, more importantly, an intensely compelling bit of television. The second series opens on a building in central Pittsburgh at night. A group of people in masks burst out of a building and jump into a waiting van. We hear sirens, a police car rips into shot and we’re straight into a chase scene. As the van speeds off, all its occupants take off their masks. One of them sits completely still, radiating a focused calm in direct opposition to the panic and swearing raging among the others. He steadily suggests a direction for the driver to take, which gets the cop car off their tail, but others appear. “Do something!” one of the others yells. What is it he can do? Will it get them away? How? What then? Some of these questions are thoroughly and satisfyingly answered in that opening scene; some are tantalisingly hinted at and some are left completely untouched, to be slowly resolved over the coming episodes. The propulsive power of this sort of storytelling — mysteries steadily accumulated and progressively solved — was at the heart of season one, but developing a compelling narrative mystery is something even Dan Brown has proven able to do. What set Stranger Things 1 apart from its rollicking story was its bigness. Its accumulated mysteries were at the centre of a collection of stories that were funny, sad and heartwarming, peopled with strong and unusual characters and wrapped in a brilliantly conceived and executed cocoon of 80s nostalgia that meant millions of people around the world were reduced to saying to their friends, as they will be about this second series: “It’s not really about monsters. It’s hard to explain. You just have to watch it.”
Stranger Things 2 is on Netflix
Stranger Things is, besides all these other things, a pastiche of homages to their favourite film makers.