‘Stranger Things Season 4, Vol 1’ review: All aboard the Upside Down for yet another merry round

From the rocking 80s soundtrack, to analogue devices, richly drawn characters, genuine thrills, scares and humour, it is all laid out in a delicious Spielberg-inspired platter

Even though each of the seven episodes of Volume 1, Season 4 of  Stranger Things is practically a mini-movie, it is so gripping and mind-blowing that you do not realise you have binged it, till the end credits roll, and you have a hollow feeling in your stomach for having forgotten to eat. 

Season 4 picks up six months after the climactic battle of Starcourt Mall, which was set in the summer of 1985. The Byers, Joyce (Winona Ryder), her sons, Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), moved to Lenora Hills in California. 

Eleven is a telepathic and psychokinetic girl who escaped from the Hawkins Laboratory where experiments were being performed on her by “Papa” Brenner (Matthew Modine). She rescued Hawkins from all the nasties from the alternate dimension of Upside Down. But now, Eleven finds it difficult to adjust to school at Lenora Hills with its bunch of mean girls. 

Mike, (Finn Wolfhard) who helped Eleven when she first escaped, and who he is dating, comes to Lenora Hills for spring break to find many things, including Joyce having to rush off to Alaska. She goes with her friend, Murray (Brett Gelman) to meet the mysterious Yuri (Nikola Djuricko), with a chunk of change after getting a mysterious communication from Russia about an American prisoner. 

At the end of Season 3, Police Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) seemingly died, but in the post-credit sequence, there was mention of an American prisoner in a chilly maximum security Russian prison... 

While Eleven, Will and Mike are dealing with their issues, and Jonathan is smoking up with ultimate stoner and pizza delivery boy Argyle (Eduardo Franco), there are stirrings from the Upside Down in Hawkins.   

A sinister creature, Vecna, targets the minds of troubled teenagers and destroys them from the inside. Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), the leader of the D&D club in Hawkins Middle School, Hellfire Club, is the prime suspect. Nancy (Natalia Dyer) puts her journalistic instincts to good use remembering a serial killer from the 50s, Victor Kreel (Robert Englund), whose family met with a similar sticky end.