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"Stranger Things" is an 8-episode television series broadcast by the digital platform Netflix in the summer of 2016.
It is set in 1983 and tells the story of 3 somewhat geeky kids, passionate about science and role-playing games, who are trying in every way to save Will, a friend of theirs who has literally vanished into thin air.
On the road that will lead them, perhaps, to reunite with their companion, they will encounter Eleven, a girl with ESP powers, who has just escaped from a government institution that for years subjected her to experiments for military purposes.
And there will be first loves, a mother who refuses to believe her child is dead, even at the risk of seeming crazy, a disillusioned cop with a dramatic past, a couple of bullies who will get what they deserve, a bad doctor with no scruples, and a monster lurking in the shadows, feeding on blood.
Someone described it as "An eight-hour movie written by Stephen King, directed by Steven Spielberg, and scored by John Carpenter".
And, frankly, I don't think there's a better way to describe it.
It is a shamelessly derivative work, a calligraphic celebration of characters, stories, situations, and even single images already seen and read by anyone who has even occasionally visited the cinematic or literary fiction of the 1980s.
I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now, but frankly, I don’t think there's a single original narrative element in the entire series.
It’s not just a simple effect of deja vu.
It’s just that after a few minutes, if you're not very alert, a couple of episodes, and you already know how things will turn out.
This should make me angry.
Maybe it should make me despise this series.
Yet I watched it all in one go, over the course of a few days.
Even though I already knew that Tizio would die, that Caio would fall in love with Sempronia, and that Mevio was pretending to be a friend but was actually from the "BBC" category of Spankwire.
Perhaps the secret is that it doesn’t matter so much (or only) what you tell.
What matters most is how you tell it.
The true strength of works like "It," "Firestarter," "The Goonies," "Explorers," "E.T the Extra-Terrestrial," "Moana and Cicciolina at the World Cup" is the ability to stay with you.
Better yet, to make you have an almost uncontrollable desire to stay inside them.
You would finish reading, place the book on the nightstand, hadn’t even turned off the light yet, and were already dreaming of building a dam in the Barrens with Bill, Stan, and Ben, of razing the “Shop” lab with the power of your mind alone, of finding a treasure map in the attic (even if you didn't even have an attic), or of being chosen by who knows whom for who knows what secret mission.
But also of having friends willing to risk their lives for you, of kissing the girl you were hopelessly in love with, of being strong...
Thinking about it, they were a bunch of lies.
Clowns don't live in sewers and aliens don’t invite you onto their spaceship to watch television.
My mother wouldn’t let me cross even the local road in front of the house by myself, so how could I have built a dam? But then, of what river?
And Ylenia, the girl I liked so much in eighth grade, ended up with a guy a couple of years older who would pick her up on a moped.
Do you remember the line closing "Stand by me"?
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
My friends at 12 were even more snotty than I was.
And they probably would have gladly stepped over my dead body just to avoid a bad grade in math.
I know it today, but I knew it even back then.
Yet I carry all those stories within me as if they were mine.
I wanted to live them so badly that it’s as if I really did live them.
And "Stranger Things" reminded me of that.
And that's enough.
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