“Stranger Things” is a surprisingly good Netflix show set in the 1980’s. If any of that was news to you, I can only assume you’ve been living under a rock. The first season was weird, set in 1983, and dealt with a monster, sort of a humanoid shark that could pass between dimensions. Scary and dangerous, but just an animal (more or less). Season two – 1984 – had an enemy that was substantially more Lovecraftian in scope; intelligence and evil intent wrapped around a hard-to-describe giant presence.
Season three, due out probably next year, is set in 1985. Netflix has not yet released a trailer for the series or really any information about it, but they have released this promotional video for “Starcourt Mall” in Hawkins, Indiana. Those of you too young to remember the 80s… this video is pretty accurate. The style of the video, the fashions, the stores in the mall, the fact that people are actually, y’know, actually interacting, the fact that everyone isn’t bloated… this really does a great job of capturing what the era was like. The only bits that threw me out were a few of the early exterior shots, showing the clock tower and the mall parking lot: these sure look like they were shot using modern drones. These sort of angles could have only been caught with choppers back in the day and there’s no chance that a cheapo promotional vid like this would have done that.