A group of children in a small 1980s town confront supernatural horrors and government secrets, discovering friendship, sacrifice, and an otherworldly adventure.
A coming-of-age fantasy shaped by 80s cinema. Stranger Things is a coming-of-age series wrapped in fantasy, horror, and a deliberate divorce from reality. Across five seasons, it builds a world powered by nostalgia, cinematic references, and audiovisual storytelling techniques rooted firmly in the 1980s – most notably in the work and influence of Steven Spielberg. It is a series shaped as much by memory as by plot, and in that respect, it understands its mission perfectly.
Spielberg’s shadow (either as a director or producer) looms large over Stranger Things, not just thematically but structurally. Films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985), and the Indiana Jones trilogy (1981-1989) defined a mode of storytelling where childhood wonder collided with existential threat, where fantasy and science fiction were filtered through youthful perspective. These films, on the one hand, entertained audiences of the time, and on the other, they shaped how a generation understood fear, friendship, loss, and hope.
Writers/directors The Duffer Brothers tap directly into that lineage. Its audiovisual language – bikes against suburban horizons, practical lighting effects, synth-heavy scores, shadowy government facilities, and monsters that feel tactile rather than abstract – recreates not just the look of the era, but its emotional texture. The first three seasons, in particular, are phenomenal in how they balance character, tension, spectacle, and pacing. The series excels at ensemble storytelling, rhythmic cross-cutting, and the “last-minute save” trope, in which parallel storylines converge just in time to avert catastrophe. These climaxes are engineered with precision, reinforcing the idea that collective effort, loyalty, and belief are what ultimately matter. Oh, and that kids will come out victorious against the evil or ignorant adults.
However, where cinema benefits from restraint, long-form television risks excess – and this is where Stranger Things begins to strain under its own weight. There is a fundamental difference between a film like E.T. and a five-season series. Spielberg’s film allows for intimacy, economy, and emotional release within a contained narrative (approximately two hours). Stranger Things, by contrast, must escalate constantly. Child-led fantasy plans against overwhelming forces, excessive dramatisation of loss, cycles of self-blame, and repeated sacrificial gestures become structural necessities rather than emotional choices.
Over time, these elements lose impact through repetition. The constant emphasis on guilt and responsibility, the increasingly nonsensical strategies devised under pressure, and the now-familiar visual shorthand – powers activated, nose bleeding, blood wiped away – begin to feel less like storytelling and more like “I’ve been seeing that shot for years”. What once signified danger and cost becomes expected punctuation. The camera cuts to emotional breakdowns grow predictable, and stakes that should feel devastating instead feel prolonged.
This repetition doesn’t undermine the series entirely, but it does dilute its panache. The extraordinary becomes mundane when revisited too often, and emotional escalation loses power without variation or consequence. Can you remember how many times all the heroes/ines have blamed themselves for something, only to have someone else reassure them that it isn’t? And then switch roles?
And yet, despite these flaws, The Duffer Brothers’ creation remains absolutely worth watching. It offers a form of safe-from-harm fantasy: a world where friendship matters, where evil can be confronted, where innocence is bruised but not annihilated. The series believes in its characters and its audience, and that belief carries it further than logic ever could.
We may not see another series quite like it anytime soon. While (also) Netflix’s Dark (2017–2020) brilliantly explored an even darker, more fatalistic vision of 1980s-inspired storytelling – in Germany – Stranger Things occupies a different emotional space, one that derives from hope, nostalgia, and communal survival rather than inevitability.
Flawed, repetitive, and occasionally indulgent, Stranger Things nevertheless stands as a defining series of its era: a love letter to the cinema that shaped generations, and a mnemonic of the enduring power of fantasy to help us grow up, together.
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