chrismartin23-230-251217

I think the 3 investigators have good personalities and are pretty funny at times. The evidence they collect seems legit to me as well as their reactions. You either like these kinds of shows or you don't. This show doesn't attempt to break the mold, but it does give you some interesting evidence and neat locations with lots of history. I'd give it a 6 or 7/10 as far as paranormal shows go.

Stranger things starts off strong with its moody cinematography and nostalgic references to 1980 pop culture. After about the 5'th episode the story, acting, visuals kind of get bland. I also noticed an increasing amount of plot holes as if the writers were running out of ideas on how to tie it all together into 8 episodes, it just felt rushed near the end and really cheesy. I literally had to skip past several scenes because they were like nails on a chalk board (Spoiler Start *** where Mike was talking to El about how he wants her to live with him and his mom will be like her mom and they will be happy and yada yada, ignoring the fact that a disgusting demon monster with a venus flytrap for a head is in the room right next to them, then a few minutes later they continue on talking about "after this is all over", like umm hello? you are being stalked by a demon monster straight out of silent hill and you wanna talk about how she can eat ego waffles and other good food and sleep in her own bed. Way to sabotage your own scene by eliminating any remaining sense of suspense and horror. Spoiler End ***) I did enjoy the series for the most part and was mostly entertained so It deserves at least a 6/10, probably even 6.5. If season 2 carries on in the direction the first season was going then the the next thing heading into the upside down will be the positive ratings.

The creators have obviously hired actors for both reenactment and the testimony. This is supposedly in order to give complete anonymity to those involved with the actual events that occurred. There is unfortunately no way to know for sure how much of the script is taken from real life testimony, so you either have to just hope that its a real story or use your judgment to realize what has been embellished. Most of these stories do seem to be based on real occurrences.

That being said...

I have to drop the rating for the show down due to the fact that Its hard enough having to watch the bad reenactments in these types of shows, but when the testimony is just as fake its doubly annoying, and then the whole time you are wondering hmm.. I wonder if her glass of wine actually turned into blood in real life? because you have no way to know. You can only assume they are telling the truth when they say they use fake people in order to protect the actual victims identities. But other people have stated there have been episodes with stories that are seemingly completely made up after scouring the web and finding zero connections to the supposed events.

I will likely continue to watch the show and perhaps update my review of it later on. For now I will just say you should avoid it if you are looking specifically for actual footage or recordings as evidence of the paranormal or verifiable eyewitness testimony. It does have some good entertainment value though so I won't give it too bad a rating.