"Nostalgia is the low-water mark of the conversation". It's one of Tony Sopranos's best quotes from Sopranos mafio son, and also captures the most common criticism of Stranger Things, the mys rider who has become a beloved campfire in the television world.
In the director brothers Matt and Ross Duffer's audience favorite, the experience of being a child in the 80s blends with the decade's premier horror classics, a cocktail of Stephen King moods and the feeling of eternal summer vacation.
And dismissing Stranger Things as flamboyant nostalgia is a blatant criticism: When the series is at its best, it succeeds in its purely 80s horror's best pages, in the same way True Detective did with 90s cops. A loving distillate that may not be innovative, but can achieve a more perfect experience than the originals.
The third season of the series returns to the small-town idyll of Hawkins, where childhood friends Mike, Eleven, Lucas and Will suddenly face the painful transformation of children into teenagers. Love relationships have emerged in the gang, people have started hanging out at malls and Lucas and Mike's new interest in girls has begun to create wear and tear in the nerd gang.
The fact that child actors get older usually ends badly, when the child's charming presence is replaced by the teenager's general hopelessness. But in Stranger Things, the portrayal of tween existence becomes a strength instead. The student (Milly Bobby Brown) and Max (Sadie Sink) budding best friend relationship and Will's (Noah Schnapp) desperate attempts to play with his disinterested friends are among the highlights of the season.
The stylized world of the series is also as stylish as before, carefully constructed of equal parts childhood magic and intimidating undertones, with enough pop-cultural references to fill a smaller library. The mood is the very thing with Stranger Things, and is initially set just as well here as in previous seasons.
It is only when the creatures from the series' dystopian shadow world enter the hallway that the illusion begins to slow down. It is the third summer that the Hawkins children have to save the city from ruin, and it is beginning to be difficult to muster the same enthusiasm as before. Although the creatures this time are bigger, more disgusting and more violent than ever, it becomes clear that the ideas of the Duffer brothers are starting to run out.
The gateway to another dimension is opened this time by Soviet scientists, and the whole concept of superonditional Russians is difficult to be anything but trampled. On the other hand, there are elements taken from cult classics such as Bodysnatchers, Day of the dead and The Thing that I as an 80-talist can absolutely appreciate, but unlike the first season of the series they are no more than references - nostalgic elements that this time do not rise over the originals.
Since all the protagonists immediately understand what the danger consists in, the mystery also disappears, and the plot moves well quickly from childhood idyll to nightmarish struggle for life and death. Along the way, the character portrayals are lost, which is perhaps most evident in Winona Ryder's demotion from grieving mother on the verge of madness to comical and cranky sidekick.
I'm weak for the genre , and despite the shortcomings of Stranger Things' third season, appreciate it as a cozy matinee adventure for bleak summer days. But the feeling that lingers is that in the end, Stranger Things became what it was criticized for being from the beginning, a neat but superficial nostalgia trick.
Stranger Things' third season premieres on Netflix on July 4th.