Stranger Things, season 4, review: 1980s Americana sci-fi is irresistible – but parents be warned

Stranger Things, season 4 - Netflix
Stranger Things, season 4 - Netflix
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First, the bad news. Season four of Stranger Things (Netflix) is long. Seriously long. Epic, marathon, coast-to-coast long. In an age of streaming overload, where you can barely keep up with 10 per cent of the shows people insist you should be watching, Stranger Things arrives like the party guest you know will never leave. Sure, they’ve brought nibbles and a nice bottle of red – but is it worth it?

Is it worth 13 hours? Previously, episodes of the hit sci-fi Eighties horror-homage clocked in at under an hour, like a normal TV drama. Now, episodes 1-6 all hang around for 75 minutes, episode seven hits a testing 1hr 38, while episode eight gives you a mild reprieve at 1hr 25. Episode nine, the finale, comes in at an extraordinary 2hr 30. This isn’t even the final series, it’s the penultimate. Imagine how long the season five finale will be. Thirteen hours? You could watch Dances With Wolves three times and still have a good crack at the DVD extras.

The extraordinary thing is, it might be worth it (at least on the evidence of the six episodes given out to critics). It is, simply, wonderful to be back in Hawkins, Indiana, the Eighties-movie everytown where all your beloved high-school films were set, where the soundtrack is wall-to-wall synth classics and the very fabric of the place seems to be made of hotdogs and cheerleaders and Coca-Cola. Teen movies of the 1980s often harked back to the simpler 1950s. Now we crave that sugar-hit of the Eighties, a time before America was poisoned by loathing both internal and external.

Six months have passed in Hawkins since the shining new Starcourt Mall was levelled by a tentacled monster, but, for us, it’s been three years. This leaves episode one largely in swooping montage mode as we try desperately to remember who’s who in an increasingly sprawling ensemble piece (thank god they regularly kill characters off, otherwise we’d have no chance). Is the catch-up exposition done elegantly? No. Is it done with a heavenly Eighties-arama aesthetic and Starpoint’s Object of My Desire on the soundtrack? You bet.

The gang has splintered. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has been relocated to California with the Byers family, where, shorn of her superpowers, she is being treated to some classic new-girl-gets-bullied-by-mean-girl treatment at the local high school. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) are trying to keep the Dungeons & Dragons dream alive, but have lost Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) to the basketball team and a desire to not be a bullied dweeb. Burly police officer Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is being detained in Kamchatka at Gorbachev’s pleasure. Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers now sells encyclopaedias over the phone.

Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things, season 4 - Netflix
Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things, season 4 - Netflix

Naturally, Hawkins is put in mortal danger once again – a Pinhead-esque demon called Vecna, who preys on troubled minds – and there’s only one shaven-headed telekinetic teenage girl who can stop him. But, really, the pleasure is just in being there, as the plucky young kids go over the heads of disapproving teachers and square parents and incredulous cops to save the day. One drawback is the programme’s belief that we want to spend oodles of times in the red-tinged Upside Down or in subterranean government facilities, when all we want is to grab a shake at the Rink-O-Mania or cheer on the basketball team at the big championship game.

Some may find it all a bit too knowing for its own good: one scene, in a video store, has the characters listing dozens of films, many of which have influenced Stranger Things; Vecna bears a resemblance in style and modus operandi to Freddy Kreuger and not only does Dustin describe in detail Freddy Kreuger, but the guest star this season is Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Too much? Not a bit of it. Stranger Things is a 1980s Americana theme park, and it is all the better when it embraces that fact. One note of warning to parents: Vecna’s method of dispatching his victims is genuinely horrific.

“You want to be stuck with the nerds and the freaks for three more years?” says Lucas to his friends. Maybe not three years, Lucas, but on this evidence, 13 hours will do just fine.


Episodes 1-7 of season 4 of Stranger Things are on Netflix now. Episodes 8 and 9 will be available from July 1