Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers

So i finally decided to watch this show, and.after this first episode, i am hooked! The premise is ingaging and it is very much about the mysteries! You know something is going on, but you don't know what! The child actors are also doing a great job! If you, like me, haven't watched this show yet, i suggest you do it now!

My older sister saw the show during the summer of 2016 and she convinced me to watch it because it reminds me of the classic 80s movies and TV shows that I watched when I was growing up. So, I checked it out and to my surprise, it turned out to be very intriguing. I'll review the episodes of the first season starting with Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers.

The episode takes place in Indiana in the year 1983 where four kids named Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will are playing Dungeons and Dragons. Later, after they finished the game, Will encounters a creature that escaped from the U.S. Department of Energy and after running towards his home, he mysteriously vanishes. The next day, as the adults of Indiana try to find him, a young girl in a hospital gown steals food from a local diner and Benny, the owner of the diner, finds out that her name is Eleven. Suddenly, a bunch of armed men find her before she quickly escapes. Later, while Will's mother Joyce Byers hears his voice on a phone call, Mike Dustin and Lucas try to find Will only to find Eleven.

This pilot episode to the show is with no doubt a intriguing and solid start. Not only is the writing strong, but the characters are well introduced. Will Byers and his friendship with Mike, Dustin, and Lucas is very unique it reminds me of The Goonies, a movie that also has a strong friendship between Mike, Mouth, Chunk and Data. Needless to say, that's a great way to pay homage to the 1980s media. Also, the opening and closing sequences are really great from the disappearance of Will Byers to the his friends' encounter with Eleven with competent directing and beautiful atmosphere. The music score represents the 1980s synthesizers it respects the year and decade the episode takes place and compliments it really well.

The acting is also great. The adult actors David Harbour and Winona Ryder (who starred as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988)) did respectable jobs as Chief Hopper and Joyce Byers, the young adult actors Charlie Heaton, Natalia Dyer and Joe Keery also did respectable jobs as Steve Harrington, the bully, Nancy Wheeler, the older sister of Mike, and Jonathan Byers, the older bother of Will, and the kid actors who played Will, Mike, Dustin and Lucas, including Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb Mclaughlin, and Noah Schnapp filled their respective roles perfectly as did Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven (El), a mysterious young girl with telekinetic powers.

Overall, Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers is not only a solid start to the show, but a great reminder of presenting a story that takes place in the 1980s with horror and science fiction which is blended seamlessly well. It leaves you wanting more and there are a lot of other things to come in the first season. This deserves a thumbs up from me. :)

This is good pilot episode as it set out everything we are to expect from the rest of the season. well casted. good acting. love the 80s music and sets/costumes as well. I'll definitely watch the rest as it got me hooked.

So this is where it all starts. I'll be giving a spoiler free review of every episode, covering stuff as briefly as I can.

Okay, so Netflix outs another series with lofty expectations to match. This time, it's the 80s and a small town, Hawkins, gets to be the centre of suspense and drama. We see the world from the eyes of four junior school kids, who are the best of friends with curious minds. One of them gets involved in an intricated plot and the rest have to up their courage and suspend their disbelief to help him survive.

The first thing that you all will notice (and instantly love) is the score. It can be sensed that they put in a lot of effort to capture the 80s horror circuit synth track feel and drama hooks. The cinematography meanwhile, knocks it out of the park with brilliant camera-work and angle photography. I must say that the Duffer brothers (the makers of the show and directors of the entire season) deserve all the praise they get for igniting the perfect mix of nostalgia and entertainment.

All the child actors are phenomenal (you have to see it to believe it), and among adults, Winona Ryder and Cara Buono give very dedicated and convincing performances. The highlight overall though, is the youngling Millie Brown. Her act requires more work with facial expressions and body gestures than dialogues, and throughout, she nails this difficult task with bravado and flawlessness.

Overall, I'd say that the pilot episode definitely succeeds in its task of getting the audiences hooked. Verdict: 9/10.

Writer/directors The Duffer Brothers pay homage to the fantasy series and films they (and I) enjoyed while growing up, with a particular leaning towards the work of Steven Spielberg. Set in the '80s, Stranger Things takes place in small town America (Indiana, renowned for all things eerie), where a group of teenage nerds find themselves involved in the search for missing friend Will, who has had the misfortune of encountering an escaped experiment from a local scientific research centre. While hunting for their pal, the kids encounter Eleven, a strange girl who is on the run, pursued by 'bad people'.

With children as their protagonists, the Duffers immediately set the '80s Spielbergian tone, and they continue the retro-vibe with parallels to Poltergeist (the missing child only able to communicate via technology) and similarities to ET (dysfunctional family, kids on BMX bikes), as well as numerous references to other genre classics (most noticeably, posters glimpsed on bedroom walls) and a wonderful synthesizer score. All of this will prove a lot of fun for fans of '80s pop culture, but with strong performances all round (even Winona Ryder isn't as annoying as usual), engaging characters, and a neat mystery, Stranger Things should appeal to viewers of all ages.