Watch This: Stranger Things
I binge watched the full first season of this show in two days and, honestly, I could have done it in one if I wasn’t still suffering jet lag from a recent trip. The plot could best be described as The Goonies meets Poltergeist meets Fox’s Fringe. It’s being heralded as Stephen King meets Stephen Spielberg. Guillermo del Toro gave it two thumbs up.
Stranger Things may be a lot of thngs: King, Spielberg, 80’s, myself (Duffers pointed that to me) but what it is, above all, is good!!
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) July 17, 2016
It’s really, really good.
The plot circles around the disappearance of 12-year-old Will Byers. Three of his best friends — and a few adults — search for him throughout the eight-episode season. At first glance, the pilot seems like a throwback to creature features of the 80’s, but you soon learn there is a much bigger game afoot. It’s creepy. It’s supernatural. It’s incredibly nostalgic of the 1980’s from the music to the Trapper Keepers to the Dungeons and Dragons. It’s just so. much. fun.
Watch the trailer here:
https://youtu.be/XWxyRG_tckY
Not That: Hemlock Grove
This series is almost three years old, but it didn’t pop up on my radar until just recently. Although it seems shaped for the same target audience as Stranger Things, where Stranger Things is scary, Hemlock Grove is just scary bad.
The pilot episode’s premise is very similar. IMDb says, “A teenage girl is brutally murdered, sparking a hunt for her killer. But in a town where everyone hides a secret, will they find the monster among them?” The mystery is once again to be solved by kids, but the Hemlock Grove crew are high school aged.
I’d like to give you more details, but after enduring two seasons I still really can’t sum up the plot in any comprehensible way. I know there are vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures involved and I know the lead protagonist, Roman — played by the youngest Skarsgård — has an Oedipus complex that would make even Sigmund Freud blush. His mother, portrayed by Famke Janssen, is the one high note in the series.
It’s extremely gory, so fans of that type of horror may love the series, but for me it was just way too much.
Watch the trailer here:
