iNews reviews Stranger Things and The Living and the Dead

Jul. 24th, 2016 10:38 am
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Over on BBC1, Ashley Pharoah’s The Living and the Dead, all of which is available on iPlayer, is a properly creepy period tale set in rural Victorian Somerset, which follows Colin Morgan’s Nathan Appleby, man of science and rational thought, as he deals with ominous crows, endless hints of something nasty lurking in the woodshed, and much talk of possession.

If The Living and the Dead nods to the British Gothic tradition – Pharoah has described it as “Thomas Hardy with ghosts” – Stranger Things, which tells the story of a young boy who seemingly disappears into thin air, draws its inspiration from a more recent period.

Pitched somewhere between a wide-eyed Spielbergian vision of small-town childhood and the more horrifying Stephen King version of the same, Stranger Things is an homage to the great horror films of the 1980s. There are references to Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street and The Amityville Horror; the score nods to Alan Howarth, the man who came up with the spooky soundtracks to everything from Halloween to They Live; and even the title screenshot is designed to evoke nostalgia, recalling the covers of 1980s pulp-fiction classics such as Virginia Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic or King’s It.

Yet all that attention to detail means nothing if the chills aren’t there – as the recent half-baked X Files sequel demonstrated. Luckily for fans of 1980s horror, Stranger Things delivers. As the missing boy’s frazzled mother, Ryder is the perfect combination of anger and despair; the supporting cast is strong; and the show earns extra points for the smart way in which it focuses on the missing child’s friends and their search for their lost pal, recalling two enjoyably creepy cult 1990s series, American Gothic and Eerie, Indiana, along the way.

Most of all, though, both The Living and the Dead and Stranger Things work because their creators are so invested in the spooky nature of their stories. They might nod to the past, but they do so with straight faces. Their spine-tingling moments feel earned – which is why I’ll be spending this summer glued to their episodes with a pillow half-covering my face.

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