Dmitry Kurkin
The second season of Stranger Things was released last Friday. - a stylish netflix sci-fi carnival with parallel worlds, psychic abilities, secret government projects and a group of resourceful schoolchildren from a small town. Either the series or the "comic-con" of the Duffer brothers is a concentrated nostalgia for the aesthetics of the 80s: there are dozens of cultural references in it, and popular techniques are shamelessly borrowed from both cult science fiction films of the era and school melodramas. It is not necessary to remember them all by heart, but knowing at least the main ones, watching both seasons of Stranger Things is much more enjoyable.
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters, 1984
During the time that has elapsed between the two seasons of the series, many important things have happened. But the most significant of them - at least for the students of Hawkins High School - the release of the first "Ghostbusters". In the team of fearless children who perceive the struggle with otherworldly forces as their favorite work, and last year one could suspect an allusion to the action comedy released in the summer of 1984. But in the new season, the Duffer brothers do not hesitate to quote it quite literally.
Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu, 1928
Demogorgon, who was beaten in the first season, is replaced in the second by an enemy no less dangerous. To him, the heroes of "Stranger Things", avid players in "Dungeons & Dragons", again pick up an analogy from the bestiary of a role-playing board, but in the monster itself, Cthulhu is unmistakably guessed in appearance and habits. An ancient deity waiting in the wings, the owner of many slimy, instantly regenerating tentacles, a monster that subjugates the human mind, its creator Howard Lovecraft prescribed in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. But the wormholes of the World Inside Out, with which the inhabitants of Hawkins have to deal, suit the monster perfectly.
Goonies
The Goonies, 1985
A group of schoolchildren embarks on an adventurous adventure without parental supervision and guided by the knowledge they have learned from children's books - somewhere this has already happened, right? Truth. The adventure film, directed by Richard Donner and written by Spielberg's apprentice Chris Columbus (in the early 90s he made a splash by filming "Home Alone", and later filmed the first two volumes of "Harry Potter"), today few remember, but in vain. The story of a group of children going in search of a 17th century pirate treasure in order to save their native suburb from demolition has little to do with Stranger Things, but it was in it that the Duffers found not only inspiration, but also one of the actors of the second season, Sean Astin …
Gremlins
Gremlins, 1984
Another brainchild of Columbus - Spielberg (the latter, in the Hitchcockian manner, even appeared in the film in a cameo role), to which "Stranger Things" is unequivocally referred to. The cute animals that fall into the hands of the common American family are not so cute - especially if you feed them after midnight. The Duffers would hardly have told the parable of what children's disobedience leads to (and it brings it, of course, to rabid genocide and biological plague), but they could not resist the temptation to introduce their own mighty Gizmo into the narrative.
Alien, Alien
Alien, 1979; Aliens, 1986
Demogorgon and his relatives, creatures with multi-toothed mouths - this, of course, hello to Hans Rudolf Giger and his chimeras (the lair of monsters in the World Inside Out is all the more reminiscent of the clutches of Aliens - which is typical, and the same antidote is used against them). The parallels with the films of Ridley Scott and James Cameron, however, do not end there: Stranger Things also has its own version of Jonesy, an airborne cat with a keen nose for trouble.
Alien
E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982
The source of many quotations, both semantic and visual, Spielberg's (yes, again) "Alien" is visible in the Duffer series with the naked eye - much more so than, say, "Ignite with a Look." As you can see, the idea of trust as an extremely fragile thing that requires painstaking work, and finding a common language with someone whom most of your neighbors consider a threat, has not lost its relevance since 1982. Suppose, at the same time, that some of the characters in Stranger Things have seen Spielberg's film.
Exorcist
The Exorcist, 1973
A small but neat quote from the classic horror movie by William Friedkin is here too. As in The Exorcist, the intrigue in the corresponding scenes is not reduced to convulsions and rolling eyes, but to the fact that the operation to evict demons is hampered by an age-old trick: it is not clear when the former owner of the body is talking to you, and when - the demonic power that captured him …
Fog
The Fog, 1980
The heavy fog seen during the trip to Stonehenge prompted the classic of 80s horror John Carpenter a simple, and most importantly cheap, production solution: if you make the fog ominous enough, it itself can pull on the main character of the film. Today, a mystical haze capable of devouring an entire town has become a commonplace of the horror genre - not least thanks to the novel by Stephen King, released in the same year as Carpenter's painting. But as in many other cases, "Stranger Things" used the obvious idea wisely, and therefore the fog in the World Inside Out looks truly carnivorous.
X-Men Universe
X-Men
Should the X-Men - and Eleven, of course, be one of them - stick together, or is such a ghetto always doomed to be a target for xenophobia and paranoia? Having touched on the subject of Others and the problems of their adaptation in society in the first season (tangentially, the motif of the Marvel comic, which is more clearly articulated than ever in the recent film about Wolverine), in the second season, the creators of Stranger Things devote a detailed, albeit somewhat crumpled, chapter to her …
Cutie in pink
Pretty in Pink, 1986
Horror movies, but without the school melodramas, which actually make up a large part of the series, "Stranger Things" would lose its charm. The abundance of school melodramas of the 80s, in which the denouement will surely come during the ball, will be enough for more than one day of drunken watching. Therefore, it is better to dwell on "Cutie in Pink" by John Hughes, convincingly proving that the story of Cinderella can have an alternative, bitter-sweet, but realistic ending.
Photos: Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., Brandywine Productions, Universal Pictures, Embassy Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Netflix