(from vulture.com)
Are you ready to go beyond the Upside Down?
Stranger Things, Netflix’s Zeitgeist-y, ’80s sci-fi–horror series, is one of the most buzzed-about TV series of the past five years. It’s also a love letter from its co-creators, the Duffer brothers, to the genre movies they grew up watching — E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, and more — which contain a magic they hope to re-create. Before the show’s second season — cheekily titled Stranger Things 2, like the second in a slasher series — finally shows up on October 27, why not sate your Strangerthirst by watching the works in its (jugular) vein? (MORE HERE)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
If the films of Steven Spielberg are Stranger Things’ Bible, E.T. is its John’s Gospel: It may be less directly influential than other films in terms of the show’s surface-level horror-film aesthetic, but it has the heart and soul that moved people more than its more straightforwardly spooky analogues — and which ST is clearly attempting to evoke. From its sinister government agents in hazmat suits to its iconic bicycle imagery to its general suburbs-gone-weird vibe to its ultimate emphasis on warming hearts over chilling spines (though it remains deceptively creepy and paranoid), this story of the little alien who fell to Earth is the Stranger Things source code.
The Goonies (1985)
One of the all-time great populist collaborations, this teen-adventure classic was written by Chris Columbus (Gremlins, Home Alone, Harry Potter) and directed by Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman, Lethal Weapon) from a story by Spielberg himself. Starring showbiz scions Josh Brolin, Sean Astin, and Martha Plimpton and featuring tween superstar Corey Feldman as comic relief, its story of a gaggle of dirt-broke kids on the trail of pirate treasure in the Pacific Northwest posited a world of discovery and danger literally beneath its characters’ suburban feet. Sound familiar?
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Spielberg’s sci-fi breakthrough trafficked in some of the same “cover-up and conspiracy” mentality that Stranger Things has utilized as a Watergate by way of The X-Files bit of flavoring. Beyond that, though, it’s a story of an everyday parent awed by evidence of other worlds, and like Stranger Things, it uses children menaced and abducted by these forces as emotional linchpins. A recent theatrical rerelease has given its dazzling visual effects (by 2001 and Blade Runner’s Douglas Trumbull) and five-note theme (by all-timer John Williams) a new grip on our collective imagination.
Poltergeist (1982)
“They’re heeeeere …” At the same time Spielberg was working on the wholesome science-fantasy of E.T., he was also collaborating with Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur Tobe Hooper on this nightmarish demolition of the Reagan-era nuclear family. Starring Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams as wealthy young parents raising three children in a suburban development, its tale of an increasingly malevolent haunting centering on their angelic young daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke). Stranger Things borrows a lot from its toolbox, from the mother desperate to rescue her missing child to an electronic method of communication with the Other Side. The mother-daughter material here is white-hot with emotion, particularly when you factor in older investigators played by Beatrice Straight and Zelda Rubinstein; unlike Stranger Things, Poltergeist directly indicts the American Dream, laying the blame at the feet of the rapacious real-estate developer who built the family home. (James Wan, director of Insidious and The Conjuring, owes his entire career to this movie.)
