The second trailer for Netflix’s Stranger Things has a much more adventurous tone than the first—less eerie electronic tones, more dropped jaws and the kind of music that tells you it’s probably going to be OK. Eventually. Maybe after a few terrifying things happen.
Set in the ’80s, the eight-episode series seems to be aiming for a zone somewhere between E.T. and The X-Files: kids on bikes! Government conspiracies! Kids with freaky powers! Winona Ryder! (Also the opening scene in this trailer is almost a shot-for-shot redo of the same D&D game from E.T.) Ryder plays the mother of Will, a boy who mysteriously goes missing. In the trailer, his friends go searching for him, but the kid they find is … different.
The one bummer about this creepy, atmospheric, promising trailer? It looks to be another story about a group of friends who are all boys. (“Goodnight, ladies,” one cracks to another as they part ways in the dark.) The mysterious Eleven, a girl who arrives on the scene, obviously get embroiled in the situation, but c’mon, Netflix (or Spielberg, or whomever): boys and girls can be friends! This even happened in the ’80s, I promise.
That said, I like the look of the girl with the baseball bat on this very Spielberg-via-Star Wars poster.
Stranger Things will be available on Netflix July 15th.