Written and directed by filmmaking twins Matt and Ross Duffer (who bill themselves as the Duffer Brothers), Netflix’s beguiling yet imperfect eight-episode mystery series “Stranger Things” has a style and form that honors early 1980s moviedom — the same time period in which the show is set.
A little like J.J. Abrams’s “Super 8” in 2011, “Stranger Things” borrows here and there from “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Poltergeist,” the early “Halloween” flicks and the less successful adaptations of Stephen King’s novels, among others, including a dash of the 1999 TV cult hit “Freaks and Geeks.” The Duffers certainly nail the look and feel — even the opening credits and synthesizer score evoke the smell of stale popcorn and dirty carpet in the strip-mall twinplex.
But a series can’t subsist only as a nostalgia trip, which is why, a few episodes in, the writing and pacing fail to deliver on the larger idea. It’s still fun to see Winona Ryder so perfectly cast as Joyce Byers, a harried working mom in the small town of Hawkins, Ind., whose son Will (Noah Schnapp) disappears one night while bicycling home from a marathon Dungeons & Dragons game at the home of his friend Mike (Finn Wolfhard).
Joyce implores Jim Hopper (David Harbour), the town’s lazy police chief, to step up the search for Will — but soon enough she starts sensing her son’s presence in the lightbulbs and other electrical appliances in her house. “Where are you?” she asks the thin air. “R-I-G-H-T … H-E-R-E” he spells out in Christmas lights.
