Stranger Things: "The Vanishing of Will Byers" and "The Weirdo on Maple Street" (21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre, Georgia Film and Television Office, Netflix, 2016)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Two nights ago (Wednesday, May 15) my husband Charles and I watched the first two episodes of the Netflix TV series Stranger Things, set in 1983 but actually filmed in 2016. The series was the brainchild of Matt and Ross Duffer, credited merely as “The Duffer Brothers” (which made both Charles and I wonder why they were so eager to boast about their ineptitude at golf, which is what “duffer” really means), and the opening statement on imdb.com’s page about the first episode, “The Vanishing of Will Byers,” confused the hell out of me because it didn’t seem to have any resemblance to what Charles and I had actually watched: “American scientists, working without oversight in an obscure laboratory in a backwater town, have managed to bring about the total destruction of mankind.” The Wikipedia page on the entire series clarifies things a bit, but only a bit: “Set in the 1980’s, the series centers around the residents of the fictional small town of Hawkins, Indiana, as they are plagued by a hostile alternate dimension known as the Upside Down, after a nearby human experimentation facility opens a gateway between Earth and the Upside Down.”

The story centers around Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder, in case you were wondering whatever happened to her) and her two sons, Jonathan (the almost unearthily cute Charlie Heaton) and his younger brother Will (Noah Schnapp). One day Will disappears after he rides his bicycle onto the premises of a sinister secret research laboratory on the outskirts of Hawkins in Roane County. The wreckage of his bike is eventually recovered but Will’s whereabouts remain a mystery. Also in the dramatis personae are Jim Hopper (David Harbour), an irascible local police chief who seems to have wandered in from a Coen Brothers movie; according to the Stranger Things Wikipedia page, he’s supposed to have descended into alcoholism following the death of his teenage daughter from cancer; and a young girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), after the “011” numeral tattooed on her arm the way the Nazis did with the concentration-camp inmates, who wanders into the action. Eleven has no socialization with the norms of actual humanity; in one scene she lifts the loose-fitting dress that is her only garment and flashes herself in front of Will Byers’ friends. Evidently she was preparing to pee, since once the kids realize what was going on they immediately escort her to the nearest bathroom. Eleven has a whole goon squad, headed by a blonde woman who’s disguised as a social worker, who are out to kill her and don’t seem at all concerned about the carnage and collateral damage they leave in their wake.

I found myself pretty much letting Stranger Things wash over me, neither particularly interested in the story nor moved emotionally by it, and I wondered why I wasn’t connecting with it. There are a few things about it I liked, such as the Duffer Brothers’ creative use of music to set the film’s cultural references – though for a film supposedly set in 1983 there were quite a few 1960’s and 1970’s songs, including the Jefferson Airplane’s “She Has Funny Cars” and “White Rabbit,” as well as a genuine early-1980’s song like the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” One reason I bought this in the first place was that though it was a boxed set of DVD’s, it was packaged to look like a VHS tape, complete with the VHS logos. I saw it in a closeout bin at a Target (at least I think it was a Target) and grabbed it because not only was it sale-priced but I was struck by the retro packaging. Alas, it sank into the maw of my collection almost as soon as I got it and I just unearthed it as part of a general cleaning of our living room. I’d heard good reviews of Stranger Things that I don’t think the show – or at least the two episodes Charles and I watched May 15, “The Vanishing of Will Byers” and “The Weirdo on Maple Street” – really lived up to; I should probably watch more of it before I make up my mind, but there are a lot of other things in the backlog I’ll probably want to get to first!