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As most “Stranger Things” fans know, the Netflix series is jam-packed with pop culture references big and smallfrom the obvious bordering on product placement to the much more subtle. Given the show’s setting in the 1980s, the majority of these references tend to be to ’80s products, shows, music, and movies. In Season 5 alone, we saw 80s classics like “Good Morning Vietnam”, “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” and “The Goonies” appear both literally and figuratively. Still, “Stranger Things” is a 21st century show, and so there’s nothing stopping it from making allusions and drawing inspiration from things released in the decades following the ’80s. A notable example appears in Season 5’s “Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz,” in which a pack of Demogorgons hunts some of our Hawkins heroes in a manner it’s very reminiscent of the velociraptors in the kitchen from 1993’s “Jurassic Park.”
There’s a more obscure reference to another movie hidden throughout the fifth season’s plot, in which poor Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) is kidnapped by Vecna, aka Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower), and taken to a realm in Henry’s mind, where she and other abducted children are held in Creel’s literal mind game. The concept of Holly and others being trapped in the mind of an evil killer is one that Matt and Ross Duffer borrowed from. an underrated sci-fi thriller starring Jennifer Lopez: Tarsem Singh’s 2000 “The Cell”. The brothers first thought of the film as inspiration for what would happen to Max (Sadie Sink) and Vecna after season four, and while Max was still an integral part of the plot as filmed, the eventual addition of Holly helped solidify their choice of homage to Singh’s strange and vibrant film.
‘The Cell’ Originally Gave Duffer Brothers Max Season 5 Storyline
In “The Cell,” Lopez plays Dr. Catherine Deane, a child psychologist who uses an experimental virtual reality device that allows her to enter the mind of another person, usually to help bring a patient out of a comatose state. It turns out that notorious serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio) suffers from a schizophrenic illness similar to that of some of Deane’s patients, and the killer is left in a coma following another kidnapping of one of his victims. As authorities desperately seek to discover the location of Stargher’s latest victim before she is killed by his timed trap, Deane must enter the twisted mind of a murderer. As befits such a premise, Singh makes “The Cell” a particularly hallucinogenic and visually inventive experience.
The Duffers initially thought such a direction could be taken with Max and Vecna, after the former fell into a coma at the end of the fourth season. Matt and Ross found another alter ego for Creel, to be called Mr. Whatsit, and thought that a continued duel between Max and Vecna might resemble Singh’s thriller. As Matt Duffer said SFX Magazine in the special holiday issue of the publication:
“This idea for Mr. Whatsit came while we were working on the end of Season 4. We thought it would be really cool to have Max trapped in Vecna’s mindscape. The idea of moving into a killer’s mindscape was something really interesting to us.”
Vecna’s mindscape became more of a “fairy tale” when the Duffers included Holly.
While the Duffers’ initial idea for Max’s storyline in Season 5 was very close to “The Cell,” the concept mutated and expanded once the brothers had to find a way to tie together several themes and threads that were integral to the series as it entered its final season. As Matt Duffer explains, Holly’s inclusion led them to make Henry’s mindscape less dark and surreal and more fantasy-like:
“…[At first] it was just Max, and we hadn’t integrated Holly into the show in any meaningful way. This idea came while we were working on season five, and it gave it a more twisted, fairytale-like atmosphere. »
Indeed, the Duffers had to find a way to integrate Vecna’s world-threatening master plan with Max’s fate, as well as reintroduce the element of teenagers facing larger-than-life monstrous enemies that began the series, now that the set of Season 1 kids have all grown up. Including Holly in Vecna’s “Camazotz” kingdom took care of all that.and so the mental plot became less an homage to “The Cell” than an homage to “The Great Escape”, the 1963 film which is explicitly referenced in season 5. Still, “The Cell” DNA remains in Camazotz, enough to hopefully inspire some “Stranger Things” fans to go pick it up.
For those who do, know that there is a stunning 4K UHD edition from Arrow Video you can buy!
