How Stranger Things Season 5 Channels The Evil Dead
A cynical reader may find it convenient that a writer of a website dedicated to The Dark Tower, The Evil Dead, and Stranger Things Season 5 has found homages to the former two in the latter one.
Fans of Sam Raimi may say that I am wearing Deadite-tinted glasses. And Dark Tower heads may accuse me of coming down with a serious case of The Calvins (to the uninitiated: this is a nerdy Reddit flair inside joke).
But I am here to tell you I think these nods are real.
And as a bonus, maybe I am imagining this one, but I swear that two episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 may even have been inspired by the Neon Genesis: Evangelion movie, End of Evangelion.
This article will be about The Evil Dead references in Stranger Things 5. I will touch on The Dark Tower and other references in the future (otherwise, I will be here typing all night).
A Letter to Sam Raimi from the Duffer Brothers
I think that when a director copies a little flavor from his or her predecessors, the film blooms into a secret love letter that the creative mind shares with their audience. These breadcrumbs, if they are real, are tantalizing. For an obvious example, you know Robin Buckley, AKA Rockin Robin (played by actress Maya Hawk)? In Stranged Things 5, she often wore a T-shirt featuring the likeness of Tom Waits, the unique and super-versatile singer, songwriter, musician, actor, beatnik, and creative genius, and who was definitely much more of an underground figure in the 1980s than he is today.
Fun little easter egg, the fact that the radio jock was wearing a Tom Waits shirt. But the cinematic homages I want to talk about are a little more obscure, and perhaps more interesting, than that.
Evil Dead Influences in Stranger Things Season 5
Let’s talk about Sam Raimi, The Evil Dead, and Stranger Things Season 5. For me, first of all, when I saw the radar dish moving on the back of the van in S5 E1: The Crawl (around the 0:59 minute mark), I immediately recognized that as a Sam Raimi shot.
Look, I am not a cinematographer. So, while I am sure there is probably a name for this kind of shot, I don’t know what it is. But for me, this has Raimi’s name all over it.
It is the way the camera follows, staying relative to the dish, so that the background looks like it is moving.
The Evil Dead Clip of Deadite Head in Front of Camera
Want to see exactly what I mean? Watch the following clip. Watch the whole thing, since The Evil Dead is a fucking masterpiece of low-budget horror. You really should. But look, if you are in a hurry to see what I mean about the radar dish, skip ahead to the 2:05 mark:
The radar dish immediately made me think of Sam Raimi.
Moreover, there were two specific times in Stranger Things 5 that the camera specifically followed a characters head as they fell down and hit their skull on the floor.
The more memorable one was Will Byers (S5 Chapter 1: The Crawl, with 10:05 remaining in the episode):
The other shot was a little more forgettable. At first, I thought it was Ted Wheeler (played by Joe Chrest), when he tried to fend off a Demogorgon with a golf club. But when I rewatched that scene, I realized I was wrong. The Demogorgon just slapped him through a wall, and he landed all scrunched up behind the bed. At the time of this writing, I am really not feeling like searching through the entire season to find one semi-forgettable camera shot, so you’ll just have to trust me that it was there.
If you know where it is, leave a comment for me at the end of this article.
The White Eyes!
The other thing that really reminded me of The Evil Dead was Will Byers’ eyes. In Stranger Things Season 5, Will discovers he can tap into Vecna’s so-called Hive Mind and even participate in it, interfering with Vecna’s mind and body. Whenever Will does this, his eyes go white.
When I saw this, it send a second shock to my system.
Will’s eyes turn white, just like all the deadites in The Evil Dead franchise. This includes Ash, the main character of the Evil Dead trilogy, series, video games, etc.
Okay, look, I have to come up with a short video clip for context, so I would like to share with you one of my favorite scenes ever, the Laughter Scene from Evil Dead 2:
You can skip to about the 1:00 mark if you need to.
Also, when you watch that, do you see how the camera gets in real close to Ash’s face. Those kind of face close-ups are all over Sam Raimi’s films and I can’t help but feel like there were a couple of scenes in Stranger Things Season 5 that reminded me of this style. They were few and far between, which might be why I recognized them so strongly. But, for example, when Henry Creel is trying to follow Holly Wheeler into the cave, the camera stops just above his forehead. It gives him a sinister look.
Look, if it was just one of those things, I might chalk it up to coincidence. But when you add them all up, plus when you think about the fact that Stranger Things takes place in the 1980s (when The Devil Dead was filmed), and when you take into account how nerdy the Duffer Brothers are with their references, and once you consider this scene from Stranger Things Season 4, I think it is safe to assume these shots are an homage.
Or, if it is not safe, at least it is fun.
Next…
In the next article, I plan to follow up by discussing The Dark Tower references in Stranger Things 5. In the meantime, I will end part 1 here and now, while it is still before midnight.
I had to write this article as soon as I finished Stranger Things 5 this evening, but now it is getting late. Man, the ending gave me goosebumps, and now it is haunting me…