***This review may contain minor spoilers***
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
“Stranger Things” is back with a strong new season that builds up on all the previous relationships, while adding new faces and powerful new threats. While season two struggled due to a slow build up, this season movie a brisk pace throughout. The threat may not be clear at first, but it’s obvious something bad is going down and it’s only getting worse.
As always, the character interactions are one of the show’s biggest strengths, and it helps immensely that there’s almost everyone has a chance to show off their impressive acting chops. Interestingly enough, everybody seems to be either fighting with each other, or on separate quests throughout most of the season. Luckily, some of the new pairings we get are a lot of fun to watch. The combinations of Eleven and Max, Erica and Dustin, and especially, Steve and newcomer Robin all lead to some great character moments. Robin is the biggest surprise. While she initially comes off as just a fun background character, Maya Hawke breathes life into the role and quickly transforms her to a quirky, smart and essential part of the crew. As far as the new villains go, we’re given mostly generic evil Russians, although the Terminator-like Grigori is quite intimidating.
The special effects are great, and the creature design is frightening and disgusting. There’s a fair amount of gore and a lot of moments that are inspired by John Carpenter’s “The Thing.” The action is generally pretty brief, but there are some solid sequences, especially in the final few episodes.
The overall story is solid, and it builds up the tension at a good pace. Each group is preoccupied with their own seemingly-unrelated investigations, and while they’re all mostly interesting plotlines, it takes a bit too long before everyone starts coming together and gets each other up to speed.
“Stranger Things” season 3 is a fun and gory ride, with characters that we care about dealing with both the reality of growing apart and the absurd of trying to prevent another world ending event. While the season wraps things up fairly well, and with some emotional goodbyes, they still can’t help but slip in a mid-credits scene that hints at a season 4.
**** out of *****