Movies to Put You in the Stranger Things Mood

Did you know that Back to the Future’s 1985 release is closer to the actual 1955 of shiny diner milkshakes and sock hops than it is to the first season of Stranger Things? That’s not necessarily an important factoid to your life, but one which highlights both how long ago the actual ‘80s were, as well as how immaterial that is when it comes to enjoying their eternal appeal.

The fashion, the hair, the music, and most especially the movies of that era have stuck in the pop culture zeitgeist so thoroughly that a streaming amalgamation of all of the above remains one of the most iconic television events of this century. It also begins its end this month after nine years of making us want to party like it’s, ahem, 1989.

Still, if you’re like us, you might think to yourself you don’t have 40 hours to devote this week to reliving the past four seasons of Stranger Things. Or maybe you already have, but your thirst for ‘80s entertainment, or films just as nostalgic as the Duffer Brothers series, remains unquenched? In which case, we’ve got you covered! Below is a list of most (though never all) of the films that influenced the tone, tenor, and cadence of Hawkins, Indiana and its run-ins with the Upside Down. Tubular.

E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial

We begin with the reference point so obvious that the first season of Stranger Things happily reversed the famous image of a boy’s superpowered BFF making a bike fly. In the TV show, Eleven instead makes a van of government boogeymen chasing her and Mike go soaring into the air. It’s one of the highlights of season 1 and speaks to both the eternal appeal of E.T. and Stranger Things. Both are projects about lonely, ostracized children making due with distracted parents through the power of friendship; each features scary, nameless government-types who want to separate a child from his soulmate; and all of them feature a neighborhood call to adventure for the outcasts. Thankfully though, little Elliot and his alien bestie never kissed. – David Crow

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

To keep the Steven Spielberg theme going, we turn to his other iconic extraterrestrial movie, albeit one that came out a little before the ‘80s in 1978. If E.T. defined the children’s narrative for the first couple of seasons of Stranger Things, Close Encounters of the Third was the big influence for the adult perspective on Hawkins’ strange happenings. The most traumatic moment of Spielberg’s film is when a mother’s little boy is abducted by strange lights in the home.

Conversely, Joyce Byers uses mysterious glowing Christmas lights to communicate with her own lost child, Will (which also echoes the use of music as the great translator in Close Encounters). And though Will is saved at the end of the first season, his possession by the Mind Flayer in season 2 echoes another 1970s film about exorcisms that is too intense for children. However, the scene of the Mind Flayer coming to Will in a vision at the childhood home is straight out of this Spielberg classic. – DC

Jaws

We know we are beating the Spielbergian horse pretty hard right out of the gate, but it seems prudent given how the filmmaker’s touch as both a director and producer so thoroughly inspired early seasons of Stranger Things. And in the case of Big Jim Hopper, the lovably gruff bear of Hawkins’ police force, the touchstone is Roy Scheider’s slightly less haunted Chief Brody in Jaws. So boot this 50-year-old masterpiece up and get yourself another tale of a weary and worldly city cop finding purpose and hope when he defends his small town from a monster in the greatest shark attack movie ever made. – DC

Firestarter and Carrie

If one were to name the two overriding influences on Stranger Things writ large, it could be summed up as “Spielberg and King,” the latter referring of course to Stephen King. The prolific master of the macabre potboiler was inescapable at book stores in the 1980s, and that went for the multiplex too where his tales were adapted frequently.

His first published novel, Carrie, is definitely his best work about a telekinetic young girl who goes ham on those she perceives as her enemies. However, Brian De Palma’s dreamlike night terror adaptation from 1976 is far more horrific than anything Eleven gets up to in Stranger Things (though Angela and her other bullies in season 4 definitely mirror a young John Travolta and P.J. Soles here). So if you want to find the true inspiration for Eleven, check out the far trashier but mildly enjoyable Firestarter, a 1984 King adaptation about a telekinetic gal who goes rogue and escapes her cruel government handlers. Also to up the ‘80s nostalgia, she’s played by Drew Barrymore, E.T.’s little sister… So does that make Barrymore like Eleven’s godmother? – DC

Stand By Me

You guys wanna see a dead body? No? Well then, do you want to see a surprisingly sweet coming-of-age movie about a group of kids looking for a dead body? Based on a novella by (who else?) Stephen King, 1986’s Stand By Me captures the master horror writer’s elegiac tone of youth gone by, with none of the usual supernatural trappings.

The plot of the Rob Reiner-directed film is very simple. The year is 1959 and grade school friends Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern Tessio (Jerry O’Connell) embark on a journey outside of town where, rumor has it, they can come upon the dead body of a of a missing boy named Ray Brower. While that setup is certainly macabre, Stand By Me is really all about the strange rhythms of childhood – the grim curiosities it engenders, the unlikely friendships it nurtures, and the bittersweet memories it leaves behind.

Though they seek Mindflayers and Demogorgons rather than corpses, it’s not hard to see Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin in Stand By Me‘s central quartet. – Alec Bojalad

It Chapter One

Of all the Stephen King influences on Stranger Things, none may be more acute than his 1986 coming-of-age horror opus It. For evidence of this, look no further Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film adaptation It Chapter One. Younger viewers could be forgiven for thinking that this first part of an epic duology is riffing on Stranger Things, not vice versa.

Not only does the plot deal with a group of children confronting a monster in the 1980s (taking over from the novel’s 1950 setting), but Mike Wheeler himself is right there! Yes, Finn Wolfhard makes his film debut as Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, the clown archetype of The Losers Club … though notably not the clown of the film. That distinction goes to another fellow.

Ghostbusters

One of the most charmingly shameless bits of nostalgia-mining in Stranger Things is when the four youngest heroes—Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will—dress up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween in season 2. They even made their costumes the centerpiece of the season’s marketing. There is probably a reason, then, that Sony Pictures cast Finn Wolfhard (who plays Mike) in their starry-eyed legacy sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, four years later.

But if you haven’t revisited the original film in a good while, trust us it’s a lot funnier and more smart-assed than you might remember. Seeing it again might also remind you why the kids were so convinced everyone at school would think they’re cool for bringing proton packs to home room. Plus, the demodogs in season 2 are totally a riff on the Zuul hellhounds in Ghostbusters. – DC

Aliens

On the subject of demodogs, we might mention their other major ‘80s influence: 1986’s Aliens. While pop culture has swung back around in recent years toward celebrating Ridley Scott’s more cerebral and scary 1979 original, back in the ‘80s there were plenty who considered James Cameron’s Aliens the greatest action movie ever made. It’s relentlessly paced and with creature-feature monsters that just will not quit.

So the whole episode where Joyce, Hopper, and Mike are trapped in a building with monstrous Upside Down creatures feels like it was taken directly from the set pieces of this classic, including poor Bob Newby’s brutal death when the bug hunt goes wrong. And if you have never seen it, now’s your chance to find out why your parents were so distrusting of Paul Reiser as Dr. Owens… – DC

The Thing

Perhaps the strongest ‘80s monster movie influence on the look and aesthetic of Stranger Things is John Carpenter’s 1982 movie which did the rare thing: it became a remake that’s better than the original. The Duffer Brothers and their fellow writers even make this explicit when Lucas gets on a soap box in season 3 about how much better Carpenter’s remake is to 1951’s The Thing from Another World.

It is probably not coincidence either that season 3 was also the year where the kids had to deal with the Mind Flayer infecting and corrupting what seemed like a third of the town’s population, starting with poor Billy Hargrove. His transformation scene looks a bit like a nod to another ‘80s monster cult darling, An American Werewolf in London (1981), but the sequence where the kids try to “test” him in the sauna is straight out of Kurt Russell’s temperature checks in this definitive sci-fi portrait of paranoia. – DC

The Blob

Here’s one more ‘80s remake of a ‘50s classic that seems like it was a big influence on season 3 and (perhaps) season 5 of Stranger Things: the Blob. In the 1988 version of the story, a group of teenagers realize they’re being lied to by government authorities regarding a strange alien-like substance that is threatening to consume their town. The way the titular substance melts everyone’s bodies to mush definitely played a part in what happens to the infected folks in season 3.

Still, the setup of a group of wily teenagers knowing not to trust authorities that seek to quarantine their town appears as if it will be in direct conversation with the story of season 5. – DC

A Nightmare on Elm Street

If we are rattling off the scary movies that inform so much of the horror elements of Stranger Things, then we absolutely need to talk about the biggest influence on the show’s scariest season: Freddy Krueger. Old Dead Fred, the child murderer who after being killed by a lynch mob of angry parents comes back to haunt their teenage children as a dream demon, is basically season 4’s Vecna with jokes.

The Duffers are not shy about this fact. After all, they cast the man behind Freddy’s fedora, Robert Englund, as Victor Creel. Victor is the guy wrongfully accused of Vecna’s crimes in season 4. The authorities might have the wrong guy, but every time Vecna comes to one of his victims in “visions” that leave terrified teenagers in a dreamlike state that they cannot easily wake from, season 4 becomes the best Nightmare on Elm Street sequel since Dream Warriors in ‘87. If you haven’t seen the original 1984 flick, however, now’s your chance before Vecna’s return in season 5…

Also, FYI, Nancy is named after Heather Langenkamp’s all-time badass final girl from the 1984 original, and the cool bits of the demogorgan stretching its head through the wallpaper in season 1 is also taken from the Wes Craven original. – DC

Sixteen Candles

There’s a good chance that if you’re watching Stranger Things’ later seasons, you’re in it for the characters and youthful relationships more than the monster mash nonsense. In which case, Howard Hughes might be way more your jam than Freddy Krueger or John Carpenter. In which case, we might suggest starting with 1984’s Sixteen Candles. It’s not Hughes’ best teen film—that honor goes to The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—but it is the one that most resembles the relatively carefree innocence of love triangles and unrequited crushing in Stranger Things.

In this one, Molly Ringwald plays a girl whose family is so absent-minded about her latchkey life that they forget her 16th birthday! Worse, she is in love with a way more popular high school senior while having to shake the attentions of a nerdy guy. She is in other words like what Nancy thinks her life is in season 1 of Stranger Things, albeit the teen soapiness has passed onto her younger co-stars these days now that Nancy is in full Linda Hamilton mode. – DC

Heathers

While also on the subject of ‘80s teen movies, we’d be derelict in our duties if we did not mention the teen movie that put Ms. Joyce Byers on the map. Well before she became the face of anxious motherhood, Winona Ryder was the definitive Gen X cool girl of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and it all began in Heathers (1988), a pitch black comedy wherein Ryder plays the only popular girl at her school not named Heather. She still runs with the rest of that clique though… at least until she is convinced to start murdering these bad influences by a worse one with a dreamy smile.

Basically Mean Girls made in a time where you could joke about this kind of thing—and written by Daniel Waters, whose brother directed Mean Girls—Heathers is notoriously a movie they could never make today. But if you can put yourselves in the heightened silliness of a sarcasm-drenched ‘80s comedy aimed at 18-year-olds ready to snark after graduation, you’ll have a blast. – DC

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Perhaps the most important teen movie north star on Stranger Things, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is nominally of the raunchy R-rated sex comedy subgenre of teen movies that dominated this era. But it’s aged a lot better because it was written and directed with intelligence and authenticity by Amy Heckerling when she was only 10 years out of high school in 1982. Heckerling brings a wit and playful knowingness to the escapades of mall rats like Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), space case Spicoli (Sean Penn), and ‘80s dream girl Linda (Phoebe Cates). Yes, the same Phoebe Cates that Dustin swears his girlfriend who lives in Utah is hotter than! He swears!

Obviously Phoebe Cates’ most famous scene is a running joke in Stranger Things 3, but the film’s depiction of teenage boredom and ingenuity at dead-end mall jobs is a bigger affectionate touchstone. – DC

Back to the Future

A prominently featured flick we catch some of the kids watching at the Starcourt Theater in ST3 is of course Back to the Future. The show even has some good fun when an involuntarily-drugged Steve cannot wrap his head around Michael J. Fox (or Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties!” as Steve keeps insisting) as the star of an adventure movie.

Yet this Amblin entertainment from director Robert Zemeckis, and producer Spielberg, better encapsulates the exuberant tone of Stranger Things’ third season where kids get up to the darndest adventures, physics, interdimensional planes, and even flux capacitors be damned! – DC

Red Dawn

A recurring through-line in seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things was ‘80s pop culture’s obsession with Russian bad guys and the Cold War. As we learn in the third year, there is even a secret Russian base beneath the feet of Hawkins, Indiana. This Red invasion fantasy where only the teenagers can save us owes a deal of debt to John Milius’ Red Dawn. Actually the no-frills, no-apology depiction of gun culture in the States—a major theme in Kevin Reynolds’ screenplay—runs an influence all the way back to Stranger Things 1 where Nancy Wheeler gets target practice with Jonathan that proves vital in the finale and beyond.

However, Milius’ heightened sense of jingoism histrionics in Red Dawn find their way into seasons 3 and 4 when a group of kids meet the commies beneath their feet. – DC

Stripes

But the depiction of the Russians themselves may owe more mostly to ‘80s comedies like Stripes, at least in season 3. Depicted as envious buffoons who just want that sweet, sweet capitalism—and for Americans to stop making their lives so miserable—the Russians of the third season better resemble the Soviets we meet in Bill Murray’s popular 1981 Cold War comedy. The Ruskies get a lot more sinister in Stranger Things 4 after Hopper is shipped off to a gulag, but in function Joyce and Murray’s season 4 plot is still basically the third act of Stripes: the comic relief must slip past the Iron Curtain and save their friends from Soviet, err, hospitality. – DC

Super 8

Finally, while every other film on this list is a movie that inspired Stranger Things, it’s worth ending on a movie that tried to be Stranger Things… five years before Stranger Things even premiered! Directed by J.J. Abrams, 2011’s Super 8 is basically a dry run for everything that Netflix’s streaming behemoth would one day present. It’s: 1. Set in the ’80s (Well, 1979 technically). 2. Clearly inspired by Messrs. Spielberg and King (with Spielberg actually producing the film). 3. Features precocious youths dealing with a sci-fi/horror threat in a small Midwestern town.

Where Stranger Things and Super 8 diverge, however, is that Stranger Things is very good and Super 8 is not. That’s not to say that Super 8 is awful, mind you. Abrams’ slick, kinetic direction is rarely boring and the kid performers are all compelling enough. The Spielberg pastiche is just missing a certain energy, spark, and originality that Stranger Things contains in spades. The contrast between Stranger Things’ success and Super 8’s relative anonymity, just five years apart, is a reminder that art is a tricky thing. Sometimes talented artists can have the same good idea at roughly the same time and yet fate will smile upon only one as the zeitgeist-breaker.