Stranger Things - Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers

My three year old daughter took one look at this promo image on Netflix (en route to PAW Patrol, naturally,) and said: "Someone lost a bike." Clearly the image communicates its message.

In small town America a boy goes missing after a D&D game. Reluctant at first, the Sheriff begins to share the concerns of the boy's mother, launching a major search, which the boy's friends join on the sly. A lost girl with uncanny abilities appears in town, pursued by sinister agents who will kill to retrieve her.

Welcome to Stranger Things, a Netflix original love story to 1980s science fiction.

I'd like to see the casting calls for this series: "Will Byers, a nine year old boy
who looks like he was raised on CRT television and pizza to a soundtrack of
unironic Michael Jackson."

The main thing you notice about the series is just how goddamned 80s everything is, from the clothes to the music (I'm pretty sure one of the producers rang John Carpenter's doorbell while another nipped in the back window and stole a load of demo tapes) to the faces. I mean, seriously; how do you cast 80s looking faces? And yet... I guess those kids have always been there, they just haven't been on TV for twenty-five years. It even somehow affects to treat D&D like some mysterious new thing that no-one knows  much about except that it was in E.T.

As in Spielberg's seminal tear-jerker, at the centre of the series - or at least at the cnetre of episode 1 - are the kids: Eternal outcast nerds Mike, Lucas, Dustin and the soon absent Will, and the enigmatic and powerful Eleven, who seems to be connected to the local super secret science lab where a dark, looming presence that kill scientists and makes lightbulbs flicker may have hatched from a thing. It's the 80s, so the boys act with a freedom undreamed of in this endarkened age, despite the acres of lonely forest surrounding the town of Hawkins and the darkness that descends from about 4.30 and enfolds the town in the kind of night that falls and really means it.

"Joyce Byers, a single mother with hella 80s hair."

There are grown ups and teenagers, but they're less important so far: Will's mother drives the search for her son, but has no existence beyond that yet; Mike's parents, his sister and her horny boyfriend are just around, the latter two most making out in her room and listening to 'Now That's What I Call a 1980s Soundtrack Album*'; Sheriff Hopper is a bit more rounded, a lost soul mired in drink, but under it all a good, solid copper; the government agents are ruthless and sinister; and the guy at the diner is a decent soul until he's shot in the head. So it goes.

Stranger Things is intensely familiar and retro, which somehow manages to be new and interesting. There are shades perhaps of Super 8, but it's a slightly later period and leans a little more towards horror than SF, despite many trappings of the latter genre. 'Chapter 1: The Vanishing of Will Byers' is very much a foundation, but hints at good things to come with its sparse, practical effects and deft recreation of the visual and auditory language of 1980s cinema.

* If I were an 80s nerd or hunting for the Easter Egg in Ready Player One I'd probably be using this scene to date the series exactly.