Stranger Things - Season 1 Access

On his way home from a friend’s Dungeons & Dragons game, 12-year-old Will Byers encounters a creature in a lab area on Mirkwood, a local road. He vanishes. His mother, Joyce, reports him missing but police chief Hopper initially dismisses it. Meanwhile, a shaven-headed girl in a hospital gown steals food from a diner and flees. Mike, Dustin, and Lucas find her hiding in the rain. She can’t speak much but says “Eleven.” She shows them a photograph of Will and touches Mike’s face—and a radio crackles, revealing Will’s voice. Joyce starts hearing Will through the walls and sees flickering lights.

From the heavy wooden cabinets of the Wheeler family television to the sound of a rotary phone ringing in an empty house, the production design is painstaking. The soundtrack is a character itself—a driving synth score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein that evokes the work of Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter. When The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” plays through a crackly Walkman speaker, it isn't a gimmick; it is the emotional tether between a lost boy and his broken family. Stranger Things - Season 1