So Secret Cinema is showing Stranger Things?
Yes! After years of screening movies, this is their first foray into TV. Right now, the team are turning a super-secret (obvs) London location into Hawkins, Indiana – the scariest town in America – so fans get the chance to experience it first hand. Expect: adventure, epic music, scary monsters and more 1980s nostalgia than you can shake a Rubik’s Cube at.
Sounds like I might need to brush up on my Stranger Things knowledge. First up: who’s who again?
Mike is the leader of the gang. He set out to track down missing best friend Will, remember? Mike likes three things: Dungeons & Dragons, Ghostbusters and falling for mysterious shaven-headed girls who’ve recently escaped government testing facilities.
Sounds great. Tell me more about Will.
He’s Hawkins’ hide-and-seek champion 1981 (eek, only joking). Will managed to outwit the Demogorgon and stay alive against all the weird supernatural odds.
Who else is in their gang?
Lucas – he’s not into Eleven and he’s suspicious of outsiders who threaten his group. But he’s very quick on a BMX and he loves a bandana. Oh and Dustin – he’s got mild cleidocranial dysplasia (which makes him lisp), but that’s not going to slow him down talking. He’s got a crush on Mike’s sister Nancy, but strikes up a bromance with her ex-boyfriend Steve.
Nancy? Steve?!
Yes, Nancy is Mike’s attractive older sister who barely noticed her best friend Barb was dragged into the Upside Down by a Demogorgon. Steve was officially the biggest revelation of series two, after he went from improbable-haired bully to a lad who can fight off a monster with a baseball bat with nails in it. Talk about a character arc!
And you mentioned Eleven? Eleven what?
What moon rock have you been hiding under? Eleven is a person – a former government experiment with psychokinetic abilities. Eleven isn’t chatty, but she can kill a man with nothing but her mind and a small nosebleed. She also loves an Eggo (a frozen waffle; guess you’d know that if you’d grown up in the US).
Any adults in all this?
Joyce Byers – Will’s mum, seemingly always on the verge of a breakdown (fair: she’s been through a lot) and incredibly good at building ouija boards for flashing Christmas lights. And Jim Hopper, chief of police and a divorced, bereaved, recovering alcoholic. Which doesn’t sound very cheery. But if you’ve got a problem with the Upside Down, he’ll solve it. Well, to a point …
Is that the lot?
Oh, there’s also Jonathan Byers – Will’s older brother and school outsider, until he finally puts down his camera and hooks up with Nancy. And Billy Hargrove and Maxine “Max” Mayfield – new in town, school bully Billy is being pushed around by his abusive dad and takes it out on his younger stepsister Max.
Bitchin’. Remind me of the story so far …
Well, season one, set in 1983, covered Will’s disappearance into the Upside Down: an extremely dark, slimy and dangerous alternate dimension hidden underneath a mysterious government testing facility, Hawkins National Laboratory. Kidnapped by a monster with a serious screaming problem – the Demogorgon – Will was dragged through a portal, and forced to hide out in the Upside Down version of Castle Byers (a makeshift fort in a forest near his house) until Dustin, Mike, Lucas and Eleven rescued him.
All good, right? So season two was all hugs and puppies?
Of course not. The second season picked up with Will coughing up all manner of gross Upside Down slugs and hallucinating a giant tentacled shadow monster, the Mind Flayer, which really bummed everyone out on Halloween. This time, it’s not as easy as Will simply telling his mum what to do using a series of fairy light flashes and coded messages through the wall (duh!) – the tunnels in the Upside Down are connected to his mind through a virus. Oh, and also the kids are being hunted by a pack of mini Demogorgons, after Dustin took one in as a pet. Which sounds like a bad idea, but Dart really was very cute when Dustin found him, honestly. With Eleven’s help, they rid Will’s mind of the virus connecting him to the Upside Down and close the portal to the alternate dimension.
So are they safe yet?
No. They’re really not. The Mind Flayer is still right there outside their school. Bad luck, kids.
What’s hot in Hawkins?
So glad you asked. Most people would say Steve, with his unflattenable hair, or chief Hopper, with his gruff voice. But season three’s trailer features a topless Billy, and we don’t hate it. Oh, no, hang on – you mean culturally? The Clash’s Should I Stay Or Should I Go is the hot record (mainly because Will used it to communicate with his mum from the Upside Down, but hey, it’s also a banger). Jonathan has a poster for The Evil Dead on his wall, and we know the Eggos Eleven loves are a guaranteed sellout in this town. The new season of the show is set in 1985, the year both cult movie Back to the Future and new Coke – the disastrous sweeter recipe that landed Coke a huge national backlash in the US – launched. But the big news in series three is that Hawkins, Indiana, gets a shopping mall. Where better to wear the early 80s’ biggest and brightest looks?
Should I take inspiration for my Secret Cinema costume then?
Uh huh. Think: tube socks, crop tops, hi-tops … and some other cool stuff that doesn’t rhyme, such as jazzy print silk shirts, side ponytails, hair scarves, big glasses, two-tone baseball T-shirts and caps, Hawaiian shirts for men and braces for girls, plus everything – and we mean everything – in neon.
What should I say when I get on the Secret Cinema set?
“Justice for Barb!”
And what should I avoid on pain of Demo-death?
“Gee, I’d love to know more about Kali and the runaway gang.”
For tickets to Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things visit Secret Cinema
