Stranger Things: The Story of Henry and Dale (2017) User Reviews

A truly mediocre thing (at best)

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 18 September 2019]

The award-nominated "Stranger Things: The Story of Henry and Dale" is a pretty long title for this rather short movie from 2017. It runs for 6 minutes, slightly over, and is one of the more recent filmmaking effort by prolific short film director Brittany Joyner. This is of course an American English-language movie and it is equally obvious thanks to the telling title that here we have a little fan-made movie taking place in the universe of the highly successful television show Stranger Things. Now fan-made films are a big thing nowadays for a lot more than Star Wars and Lego takes on movies, so no surprise some also put their hand on Stranger Things. Still I must say the connection for me is a bit vague, but this may also be subjective because I am not too well-informed about the show. Then again being fully aware and having seen everything from one project to enjoy another should never be a necessary condition anyway to appreciate one movie. As for camera work, acting and the atmospheric take, this is all so-so what we have here. I must say the film never really had me on the edge of my seat unfortunately and somehow I feel that really dedicated fans of the actual Stranger Things may not see things differently. Sure, it is probably still above-average for a fan-made movie, but as we are rating films here from the general perspective I must say I do not recommend checking this one out. The ending with the telephone felt really out of place too in my opinion. So yeah there is a female voice actress in it it as well if we take a closer look, but other than that it is really all about the two guys you see before that, especially the one bearded fellow. Both do not really have any acting experience (according to imdb), so taking that into account hey aren't too shabby. It says one of them is a prolific comedian? So yeah that may be the reason. Overall, a thumbs-down for this project here from me. Not a failure, but I suggest you watch something else instead.