‘Vecna’s Curse’ Amps Up The Horror

Stranger Things 4 is a real return to form for the Netflix show, which was a little uneven throughout Seasons 2 and 3.

What I’ve seen of Season 4 so far I believe is the best it’s been since the very first season—and perhaps even scarier. It feels fresh, with tightly woven stories and character drama that’s all interlaced with moments of shocking horror and moments of pure hilarity. I love these characters more than ever.

Spoilers follow.

Roller Derby Queen

When you look at the above image of Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) skating around a vintage 80s’ roller-skating rink it looks like they’re happy, having a great time. But there’s a third-wheel in the picture. Will (Noah Schnapp) has a pensive look on his face, somewhere between a smile and a wince.

Will knows what Mike does not: The Eleven has been bullied mercilessly at her new school, led by the vile Angela (Elodie Grace Orkin) and her cronies.

When Angela shows up at the same roller-rink with her entourage, we know things are going to go badly for El—we just aren’t quite prepared for how bad.

Before Angela actually shows up, Eleven continues to lie to Mike, telling him that she comes to parties here “all the time” and continuing the charade that Angela is actually her friend and not her tormenter. It’s sad to watch, and Will is visibly frustrated.

When Angela pulls a reluctant Eleven away from the table where she’s sitting with Will and Mike, Will finally comes clean, telling Mike that El’s been having a hard time at school—just in time for him to witness this latest humiliation.

Angela skates Eleven into the middle of the rink and the DJ puts on the song ‘Wipeout’ dedicating it to ‘the snitch’ which is how all the kids are now referring to Eleven since she didn’t clear Angela’s name at school (though she also did not in any way snitch).

They start circling Eleven in the middle of the rink, taunting her and jeering at her as Mike, horrified, yells at the D.J. to shut off the music. He does and just then one of the students rolls up and tosses a chocolate milkshake on her, causing her to fall and the DJ to proclaim “Wipeout!”

The entire thing is being recorded by one of Angela’s minions on a video camera. It’s gross and awful and you empathize quite a bit a little while later when Eleven grabs a roller skate and smashes it into Angela’s smarmy face. Empathize, sure, but this was still a very bad idea. Throwing a punch would have been a better course of action. Angela’s forehead opens up and blood starts pouring out and she starts wailing.

Naturally, we feel no sympathy for the bully, but it seems clear that this will come back to haunt Eleven. As Mike asks her, shocked, “What did you do? What did you do?” she flashes back to the massacre at the lab and Dr. Brenner saying “What have you done? What have you done?”

Again, I think this is clearly foreshadowing. El’s shame is the doorway that Vecna—our new Big Bad—can use to reach her and cast his diabolical curse. This is how he reached Chrissy (Grace Van Dien) in Episode 1, and how he reaches Fred (Logan Riley Bruner) in this week’s episode. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Dinner Of Champions

The kids head home after the fiasco at the roller-skating rink only to find an old friend cooking risotto: Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman). The next scene serves as some much-needed comic relief after the awfulness at the rink.

Murray is here because he and Joyce (Winona Ryder) were able to contact the number from the mysterious package she received in Episode 1 that contained the doll with the hilarious coded message, revealing that Hopper was, in fact, alive. “Proof of life,” as Murray puts it.

Their contact—a Russian guard named Dmitri who goes by the codename Enzo (played by Game Of Thrones alumni Tom Wlaschiha, aka Jaqen H’ghar)—wants $40,000 USD and has arranged a drop point in Alaska, and contact with a Russian smuggler named Yuri. Because Joyce is still so determined to protect her children even by deceiving them, she tells them that she’s going to Alaska for an overnight conference for her job.

This is a detail that her son Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) has a hard time following thanks to his buddy Argyle’s (Eduardo Franco) pot, which they consumed a great deal of while hitting golf balls at a junkyard as Jonathan unloaded his worries about Nancy on Argyle, who quips “This is stressing me out and she’s not even my girlfriend!).

Jonathan is blazed and Heaton is convincing, and Joyce—poor naïve Joyce—seems totally baffled. It’s a funny gag, but ends with Eleven storming off when the roller skate incident comes up.

“I feel like there’s tension,” Murray says. “Was it the risotto?”

“No!” Jonathan and Argyle reassure him. “The risotto is great!”

Trouble In Hawkins

Back in Hawkins, Max (Sadie Sink) wakes up from a nightmare. Sirens are going off and cops show up at Eddie’s trailer across the way. She goes out front to see what’s going on and sees the body through the door. Eddie (Joseph Quinn) and his van are nowhere to be seen.

The cops interview Eddie’s uncle Wayne (Joel Stoffer) and set up a crime scene, and holler at Max when she gets too close.

The news of a dead high school student spreads fast, and across town people tune into the local news station for updates. So far, the identity of the victim and the prime suspect remain unknown to anyone but the cops and Max, who tracks down Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and tells him what she witnessed—as well as the strange flickering of lights and other mysterious goings on. Neither believes Eddie was the killer.

They head over to the video store where they enlist the help of Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke), filling them in on the case and attempting to track down Eddie before the police get to him by first calling all his friends and then later, thanks to a bright idea from Robin, looking up rentals from his drug dealer, Reefer Rick (they don’t have a last name so they use video rental history to see which Rick seems most likely).

They find a Rick whose rental history includes some Cheech & Chong movies and lives in a remote lake house, and off they go to see if Eddie’s hiding out there.

Meanwhile, the cops head to the local party spot—Benny’s old diner where El first hid out. Here, Lucas (Caleb McLauhglin) is experiencing his first really bad hangover, puking in a toilet as the rest of the basketball team lounges around. They turn on the TV and see the news about the dead student and one jokes that maybe it’s Chrissy and that’s why she ghosted Jason (Mason Dye). Not a tasteful joke even if it wasn’t so dead-on.

The cops interview Jason and make it pretty clear that yes, Chrissy is the victim and that she was perhaps buying drugs from Eddie. Jason leaves the building and storms off into the woods, distraught. Soon, it’ll be like Ciri in The Witcher—everyone will be looking for Eddie, from Dustin and his group to the police to the basketball team.

Fortunately, the good guys find Eddie first, exactly where they thought he would be. After some convincing, they convince him they’re on his side and that they’ll believe his story, having been through plenty of weird crap in Hawkins themselves.

He tells them what happens and they connect the dots pretty quickly. The new monster is Vecna, the lich, “an undead creature of great power. A spellcaster. A Dark Wizard.”

As they discuss this revelation we see Vecna floating in the air attached to some kind of vines or tubes—perhaps a charging station of some sort?—and the camera zooms out to show us a decrepit mansion in the Upside Down. A haunted house almost certainly connected to Hawkins. The lich’s dark tower.

Drop Dead Fred

The last of our subplots sees Nancy (Natalie Dyer) and Fred heading out to the trailer park where Chrissy died. When they get there, the cop tells them that nobody can enter, but they pretend to be “nannies” to Max and would just like to check on her to make sure she’s okay.

As the cop talks with them, he suddenly scowls at Fred, “Hey I know you,” he says. “You killed that kid.”

And suddenly his face turns into a snarl and begins to change. Fred has a vision of a car accident, presumably one in which he survived but the other driver did not. His secret shame. The scar on his face opens up and blood begins to seep out. The policeman’s face is a monstrous, fanged horror.

Then he snaps out of it and they drive in, Fred visibly shaken but not about to tell Nancy what happened.

They dig. Asking people around the park questions. Nancy convinces Eddie’s uncle to talk with her and he tells her about Victor Creel, a man who apparently killed his entire family back in the late 1950s and is still locked away at the mental asylum. It’s a lead, and the only one anybody has so far.

Fred hears the clock while Nancy is talking to Wayne, and he wanders out into the woods. Sure enough, he comes across a grandfather clock, this one laid out like a coffin. There are mourners around it dressed in black, but their faces are twisted and grotesque, zombie-like. “Murderer!” they shout at him, and he runs.

When he makes it to the street, there’s the smoking ruin of the car from his past accident. He stumbles backward into a pit in the road and panics, looking for some way to climb out. But there is no escape. “Fred,” a dark voice intones.

He turns around. The pit opens up to a tunnel and along that tunnel, Vecna stalks toward him. “Join me,” he tells the poor kid. He places his clawed fingers over Fred’s face. Fred floats up into the air. We see him hovering high above the road as his bones snap and his limbs break, as his eyes capsize into his skull. His corpse, broken and bloody, plummets with a sickening crunch to the pavement below.

Verdict

Like the season premiere (here’s my recap/review) ‘Vecna’s Curse’ was another excellent episode of Stranger Things. This season, so far at least, is the strongest this show has been since the first season. The pacing is tight, each subplot is exciting and tense, there’s a ton of great mystery to keep us guessing and plenty of horror to keep us on the edge of our seats.

I get the distinct feeling that I’m going to be very, very sad when I finish episode 7 and have to wait an entire month for the next two episodes. If the season stays this strong throughout it could be the best season yet—and I say this as someone who has, up to this point, felt that Season 1 was the strongest by far. Season 2 was pretty weak, all told, and Season 3—while definitely a step in the right direction—had a lot of annoying stuff like the constant boyfriend/girlfriend drama, kissing and Hopper being too angry all the time.

This season just feels like a real return to form with both the action and horror elements dialed up and the pacing and character arcs masterfully honed in. I’m extremely impressed.

I’ll be posting recaps every day this week here on this blog, so give me a follow if you want to read more. Next up, The Monster and the Superhero.

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Read my Season 4 reviews at the links below:

If you need a recap of Seasons 1 – 3 I have you covered.