Must Watch Reviews Stranger Things Season 4

Tuesday 31 May 2022, 13:51

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Stranger Things Season 4.

The supernatural series returns to Netflix after three years, covering complexities of high school, vulnerability and the gruesome horrors that put an end to the Upside Down.

Hayley says “Stranger Things is all borrowed vividness; it’s borrowed affection as well”

I've always had a problem with the whole nostalgia thing that 'Stranger Things' is built on. Allow me to be slightly pretentious here, but there's an old New Yorker writer called John McPhee who wrote a lot about how to write well, and he was talking about relying on existing culture as a crutch. Like saying something was 'like the Red Wedding' and not elaborating, it will have less effect years after that happened because people will only vaguely remember it. He wrote, 'you'll never land smoothly on borrowed vividness’. I think about that a lot because 'Stranger Things' is all borrowed vividness, and it's all borrowed affection as well.

The previous seasons were a lot like 'E.T' and 'The Goonies' and this one seems to have upped the horror quotient a bit so it's more body horror like 'The Exorcist' and then the monster is doing things with the kids’ minds like in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'. They've even cast Robert Englund who played Freddy Krueger. It’s all a mash-up of movies you watched on beat up old videos and it always feels to me like they're borrowing your pre-existing fondness for something and tricking you into thinking you like this new thing, which is quite empty.

The story is rubbish, but it has good songs played over the top. In fact, this has caused a resurgence in the popularity of Kate Bush as new people discover her. So much so that 'Running up that Hill' is currently number one on iTunes.

If you're a fan, it's more of the thing that you like – and so much more of the thing you like. But I don't think the extra hours make this any better or any more special, they're just making more of it and being less picky about what makes it in. Endless runtime is never a good thing.

Scott says : “It's no-where near as good as Season 1, nothing else will be”

They've announced proudly that this series is double what the last series was in length overall - as if anyone was wanting it to be double - but it's the last three episodes that have got the most attention. The final episode of the series is two and a half hours long, which is longer than most Blockbuster films. I mean, it is utterly ridiculous.

When you watch these episodes from this new series, it doesn't really offer anything deeper, such as a deep dive into the characters or their relationships. There's just more plot.

Of course, there are some frustrating parts in the last series too, involving a secret Russian base underground that was trying to connect another dimension- that I felt was a bit far-fetched. But then, I realised that maybe having the upside down and everything else attached to that; trying to find reason and logic in a show such as 'Stranger Things' is a little bit silly.

However, I still found it a bit of a ride, I love the fact that all the characters in this series are all split apart due to circumstances at the end of series three and in series four for at least the first two episodes is a grand: 'Let's get all the gang back together'. Then when they are; generally, there is a little bit of a buzz, a little bit of a thrill.

There are some great moments, some intense horror scenes and this is the thing; this series of 'Stranger Things' is not trying to do anything different that it's ever done, at some points it does feel a bit 'Deja-vu' like it's retracing its own footsteps. It does feel ridiculously expensive, so much so that the previous series, the last series of 'Game of Thrones' reportedly cost $15 million per episode - this is reportedly double that.

It's no-where near as good as Season 1, nothing else will be, because that series felt complete- it didn't feel like we needed any of the other series', but I still had a good time.