STRANGER THINGS 4: VOLUME 1 (Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer). Seven episodes available to stream on Friday, May 27, on Netflix. Rating: NNN
A grandfather clock keeps showing up in Stranger Things 4. It’s a death knell from the new season’s Freddy Krueger-like villain, letting out a haunting and elongated dong in the waking dreams of characters from Hawkins who are running out of time.
If only Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers took that effectively chilling recurring image seriously. If only they too felt time as a constraint.
You may have already heard that the new season boasts the longest episode run times ever for Stranger Things. There are seven episodes in the first volume arriving this week. The shortest is 63 minutes. The longest is 98. They will be followed by a second volume in July, with two episodes running 85 and 150 minutes. Stranger Things 4 runs about as long as nine feature length movies. The problem with all that math is that despite a cast that has grown in populace and age over the past three seasons, Stranger Things doesn’t have much to fill the time with; at least not enough that’s compelling. You half suspect that these episodes are so long because Netflix just wants to juice its “minutes watched” stats with one of its most coveted properties.
The new season stretches out the most basic plot lines beyond their breaking point, the most unbearably dull belonging to David Harbour’s former chief of police Hopper. He cheated death during last season’s finale to end up in narrative purgatory. He’s held captive in a Russian prison, enduring torture while planning an escape that is simultaneously painstaking and nonsensical. It hurt my heart every time the series broke away from superhuman teen Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) or the Goonies-like squad led by adorkable Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and humbled former prom king Steve (Joe Keery) to check in on Hopper’s off-brand Shawshank plight.
Not that Eleven’s journey is all that riveting in season four. She lands back in a lab, searching her own origin story for new revelations while trying to regain the telekinetic powers that somehow slipped away. Her story tests our patience, slowly teasing out flashbacks while keeping us in the dark, holding back a worthy payoff till the very end of volume one.
And while she’s soul searching at a secret facility in the desert, her paramour Mike (Finn Wolfhard) is hanging out with the Upside Down’s OG hostage Will (Noah Schnapp), his older brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and his pot-smoking bud Argyle (Eduardo Franco). They keep themselves busy on a wild goose chase with pesky secret operatives; yet another thread that’s just stalling, keeping the main protagonists in their own corners, far from their tiny, haunted hometown of Hawkins where all the real action is.
That leaves the burden of entertaining us on the characters that have consistently stood out while playing second fiddle during all these seasons. They include Dustin and fellow Dungeons and Dragons hobbyist Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Steve and his resourceful ex-girlfriend Nancy (Natalia Dyer), tough but emo-ish Max (Sadie Sink) and newer recruits like Robin (Maya Hawke), Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Eddie (Joseph Quinn).
They’re the ones bringing that old school Stranger Things charm, and working up a genuinely thrilling rapport, while squaring off against the new villain from the Upside Down called Vecna (the Tales From The Crypt-looking mofo in the trailer). He’s a demonic serial killer who possesses and terrorizes teens before snapping their bodies like twigs. As he takes his victims, the Hawkins community start pointing fingers, giving into Satanic panic and leaning towards Salem-style vigilante justice.
This is the only storyline that does what we expect from Stranger Things: stealing liberally and affectionately from 80s influences like The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror and A Nightmare On Elm Street. It’s also the only storyline with a sense of momentum. The characters often find themselves racing against that nightmare clock, which is pretty much the true hero of Stranger Things 4.
