‘Stranger Things 4’ is spectacular, but also unbalanced

Fans of Stranger Things had to have a lot of patience. The previous season of the series about a nerdy group of kids and their adventures with slippery monsters in the American town of Hawkins was launched almost three years ago. Making a large production full of visual effects takes a long time anyway, but the corona crisis stretched the waiting time even further. The creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, make up for the long absence by presenting the biggest and most spectacular season to date. This approach does come at the expense of the original charm.

So far, the Duffers have managed to strike a good balance between the various ingredients of their series: horror, humor, science fiction and pop culture references to the eighties — the time in which the series is set. The new episodes are a lot more serious in tone and contain a few real horror moments, especially for younger viewers. The makers also lose themselves a bit in the story with a cast that has actually become too big.

The series is for the first time split into two parts and the usual playing time of TV episodes is considerably stretched: the new episodes in the first half of the season last around 75 minutes, the final part even 98 minutes. Understandably, Netflix offers that space: Stranger Things is still one of the streaming service’s biggest hits. The company, which recently lost subscribers for the first time in ten years, could use some success. The more Stranger Things, the better, will probably have been the thought. But in this case, less is more be a better idea. “No good movie lasts too long,” said legendary film critic Roger Ebert. The same goes for series and therefore the long playing time is not necessarily a bad idea, but then you have to use that time in a meaningful way.

Upside Down

In the first season everything was still simple and clear. After the missing boy Will Byers, his friends found themselves in an exciting and creepy adventure with a monster from the Upside Down (another dimension). They got help from Eleven, a mysterious girl with super powers. She was eventually adopted by Police Chief Jim Hopper. He seemed to sacrifice himself in the final season in a final battle against the evil of the Upside Down.

It is now 1986 and the children are in secondary school. The group has fallen apart. Eleven, now called Jane, is in California with some other characters, while the other part of the group is still in Hawkins. A new threat forces everyone back to work. A monster named Vecna ​​makes victims in Hawkins by using trauma from its victims. Hopper, meanwhile, turns out to be still alive, but is imprisoned in a Russian penal camp. By separating the characters in this way and giving each their own side paths, the season has less focus.

Everything used to be much easier, concludes Steve Harrington, one of the main characters, at one point. He refers to the relatively simple battle of monsters in previous seasons (“We had that girl, she had super powers”). Now Steve is often a bit short-sighted, but as a commentary on the increasingly complicated developments in Stranger Things his analysis is correct. The Duffers have to keep up with many more lines and characters and that turns out to be a difficult task.

Some elements still work: the scenes with survivors in Hawkins, including the mischievous Dustin and the somewhat chaotic Robin, work best. It’s also where you’ll find the best jokes and the best pop-cultural references (Kate Bush’s music plays an important role). Unfortunately, the momentum is too often at other times: especially the developments with Hopper are slow and frustrating. Fortunately, the season is eventually shifting into high gear. In the seventh episode, all brakes are released and we are reminded why the series became such a sensation.