Chapter Two: Vecna's Curse

We see the fallout from Chrissy's death, Michael arrives in California, and Joyce makes a discovery.

This is a strong episode with intriguing moments of storytelling.

The events in Hawkins get moving in quite compelling way. The scenes involving Dustin, Max, Steve, and Robin are quintessentially 'Stranger Things' and full of great entertainment. I love how they use the video store computer and the numerous Easter eggs and pop culture references involved.

The horror aspect is very well done again and we get a bit more information to keep it intriguing. There are plenty of creepy moments reminiscent of 80s horror like Nightmare on Elm Street, The Omen, and Hellraiser, for those who love the nostalgia.

What happens in California continues the Brian de Palma influenced arc of Eleven. This is a great tribute and compelling portrayal of bullying. The victimisation that went on in my school in the 80s was even worse than this portrayal. Sadly anyone who was not popular, white, attractive, heterosexual, able-bodied or tough enough to instil fear in others experienced some form of it. Personally though, I think it's time for El's story to move on from this in the next episode as it feels to me they have enough mileage from it. Millie Bobby Brown is exceptionally good.

Wynona Ryder and Brett Gelman are on great form in their scenes that indicate some big adventures are to come for their characters. This is another aspect of the overall plot that keeps the show interesting.

All performances and production values are top drawer.

A great follow up to the first episode! Also has one of the hardest lines of dialogue I've ever heard (see review title). Not much else to say but this season is already better than season 3 for me. Loving this so far!!

The whole teen drama here is completely overexposed and blown up to a magnitude of parody. It just feels infantile. What are the writers trying to covey here has completely missed the mark if there was even one - do you even proofread those scripts?

Huge fan of the series, but so far i'm barely hanging to it.

This episode is another indication the Duffer Brothers are not messing around. Season 4 is on the verge of blowing away season 1. I don't recall ever watching a series that gave you science fiction, horror, suspense, high school drama and some comedy all rolled into one. After just 2 episodes of season 4, there hasn't been a slow moment. The scripts and scenes are tightly written and directed. My only down feeling of this particular episode was El's actions towards the end of the episode. I didn't expect that. But I suppose it's leading to something. Can't wait for eppy 3!!! I hear they get even better. Wow!

...But then I remembered that one-third of the episode was the continuation of the boring and trite bully trope and kinda ruined the episode. I'm not saying don't do the bullying, because they're definitely going somewhere with this, but at least do it in a way so we don't think we've seen this a million times before, ok?

Like I don't know why every "horror" movie and show about the 80s has to have a bullying of our main character subplot. I get it, it's high school, you can't have it all fine and dandy and make a movie about it without there being any conflict for our main character, all I'm asking for, is to be more creative with your conflict and do something other than throwing a clichéd bully character in there, or if you're doing a bully, at least make it a little different than the other thousand bully character we've seen before.

But I don't know why I'm expecting creativity from Stranger Things, since the show's whole premise is nostalgia baiting and retelling other horror stories and characters, and I also never forget that they just rehashed seasons 1 and 2's plot for season 3.

Other than that, I think it was a good episode with lots of developments for every plot line, even the bullying one, even though I didn't like how long and over the top and clichéd it was.

One thing that made Stranger Things great in season one was the fear of the unknown element of the monster it had, but they seem to have ditched that after season 2 and we get to see the monster from episode 1, so the element of suspense and tension and also the fear of the unknown is practically gone from the show, but I still like it.

It's not like I watch ghost horror movies anymore or I get scared by them.

I loved the body horror at the end of the episode and I hope to see it more. At least that's more entertaining than cheap jump scares.

If they're gonna go really dark with this season, I think killing one of the main characters (and definitely not bringing them back in the next season) would really benefit the show and just put the stakes high. So far - and in the previous seasons too - the only people that the monster(s) kill are some side character that we only got to know about in the last episode or two, or some character that joined the group for just that season. So that makes me see a formula here and I can already guess from these two first episodes who they're gonna make us like throughout the season and kill at the end. I hope that's not the case and they'll surprise us and not do the same they did for 3 seasons because you know what they say about the definition of insanity...