It starts with those floating red letters and that electro-ethereal music. The intro creates the surreal effect of Netflix’s sci-fi juggernaut being brought to life as a stage-sized facsimile before our eyes. But the big surprise about this prequel to the TV series, about high-schoolers who tap into the dangerous world of the Upside Down, is that it is neither derivative nor an exercise in imitation. This is breathtaking theatre with its own arresting imagination.
With an original story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry, we are still in Hawkins, Indiana, where pets are mysteriously dying, but it kicks off exactly four decades before the 1983 start of the first series. Writer Trefry takes a flashback from the fourth season and turns it into a typically complicated plot, although my 10-year-old companion (the guidance is for 12+) had no problem following it.
