Watch the opening to Stranger Things and you'll feel like you're reading a great Stephen King prologue.
The U.S. Department of Energy loses control of a top secret experiment in the fall of '83. An unseen evil force escapes from their laboratory, threatening nearby residents of Hawkins, Indiana.
Local boys Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Will bike home at curfew on a Sunday night, encased in an ethereal world of drum machines and Tangerine Dream synthesizers. Will vanishes from thin air shortly thereafter. His mother Joyce (Winona Ryder), worried when her young son doesn't show up at home, reports him missing to salty police chief Jim Hopper, played to perfection by David Harbour.
As concern mounts for the missing Will Byers we get clued in on the social lives of the other young students of Hawkins. Bullies humiliate Dustin, Mike, and Lucas. Mike's teenage sister Nancy can't resist advances from oversexed jock Steve Harrington. We are also introduced to a feral girl who walks into a diner in a hospital gown.
The girl, seemingly unable to speak, is suspected of being abused and the cook decides to phone child services. An unassuming older woman arrives at the diner, claiming to be a social worker, but the girl senses trouble. Her fears are confirmed when the suited government officials arrive--most notably Matthew Modine--from the Department of Energy. The little girl is sought after, and a part of their twisted top-secret experiments. She kills two of the men off-screen and flees into the woods, fantastically reminiscent of Firestarter's Charlie McGee.
A search party begins for Will Byers, and against the stern advisory of Hopper, his three young friends decide to go out searching for him as well. Luckily for us, because what manifests in those woods of Hawkins is a union that will become the bread and butter of this show.
Even in its introductory chapter Stranger Things has a tight, involving story that will spook. It's more than an applause to campy sci-fi/horror fixtures of the eighties. This is Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper's collaborative script waiting in the drawer while E.T. wraps up production.