Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things: The First Shadow (2025)

TV-14, but that's because Stranger Things, the TV show is TV-14.  I mean, the fact that this movie bleeps out the f-bombs kind of says that this is more promotional material than it actually is proper film.  They want to have the kids who are watching Stranger Things as a form of teenage rebellion not to get into real trouble.  The things that you have to worry about in this one are the graphic clips of scenes from the Stranger Things TV show and the props that are used to recreate some of those effects.  It's honestly pretty tame if it wasn't for all of the swearing that is bleeped out...which honestly somehow makes it specifically more noticable. 

DIRECTOR:  Jonathan Halperin

I hate myself for writing about this.  It's not really a movie.  Okay, it kind of is a movie.  I refuse to sound like Steven Spielberg and start dogging on the fact that some things on Netflix aren't movies.  But I'm in the camp that this is a glorified special feature for Stranger Things.  I've been having one of those great parent bonding moments with my older two kids.  This is the first kind of hard-edged thing that they've watched and I wanted to keep the party going by watching the documentary on the stage play that I'll probably never see.  But, also, like, I want to know everything canon about Stranger Things.  If I get into a fandom, I have to know everything canon.  And if I really get into the fandom, I want to know extended universe stuff too.  I'm not there yet with Stranger Things. 

Well, the big reveal is that you probably should go buy a ticket to see this show before it disappears because I learned very little about what The First Shadow added to the storyline.  I also kind of feel a little dirty because I struggle with stuff like The First Shadow.  Part of it is the snob in me.  I'm a big fan of theatre on top of being a big fan of film.  Now, I can make peace with watching a dumb movie from time-to-time.  I actually enjoy a lot of dumb stuff.  But film has kind of evolved out of being a novelty into a valid form of art.  I suppose the same could be said about the theatre.  I want to drop the phrase "neoclassical precepts" because I studied that for so long.  In my brain, there is this assumption that theatre has always been this hallowed space for high art.  I know that isn't even remotely true.  But if we're talking about the theatre I've grown up with contrasted with the film I've grown up with, the variety of films out there make space for some less challenging films while the stage has always been the place to push me out of my comfort zone.  Well, I suppose my comfort zone is snobbiness because the notion of paying Broadway prices for seeing what amounts to a lot of fun spectacle makes me uncomfortable.

​Okay, but putting all that on the backburner (which, ultimately, should be saved for therapy), I need to look at this as a movie in itself.  Behind the Curtain is on the periphery of the fan documentary.  It's not quite a fandom doc because it isn't primarily about fandom.  Instead, it is a documentary almost exclusively for the fans of a certain fandom.  I've had a problem with most of the fandom docs that I have watched.  Ultimately, there is an assumption that what is being documented is somehow special.  The only doc that has kind of broken this rule is the oldest doc that I can think of that is a fandom doc, Trekkies.  But considering that this isn't specifically about the fans of a fandom, it does kind of work better than other docs in the subgenre.  

Honestly, the roots of this film are better than the actual film itself.  In analyzing this movie, it really ultimately doesn't matter that it is about Stranger Things, which is funny because that's the real reason that people are watching this.  What Behind the Curtain actually does is what the first part of the title suggests: what does it take to get a big budget West End play up on its feet.  There's something kind of smart --and a little bit manipulative --about the way that this play is kind of formatted.  The protagonist of the film is Kate Trefry, who is a staff writer for the Stranger Things television show.  She acts as the avatar for the audience.  She is an expert at the world of Hollywood, television, and film.  What she is completely new to is the world of the theatre.  Because theatre has different rules than film does, we have a lot of fish-out-of-water moments.  Trefry isn't ever the bad guy in the documentary.  However, she is the weakest element in a world that has no time to really wait for her.  She is used to writing in a communal environment where the rules of television apply.  She's using a formula that has worked for the screen only to discover that a lot of those tricks don't apply to when someone is doing something live every night.  That's kind of fascinating because, ultimately, the film is trying to convey the sense of anxiety for an outsider.  While there, no doubt, is a lot of anxiety when it comes to producing a television show, Trefry is aware and prepared for that kind of anxiety.  Because she's not part of the world of theatre, everything kind of comes as a shock to what is expected of her as things move on.  She's never the bad guy.  She does her job.  She pushes herself harder and harder.  In fact, her biggest critic is herself because she doesn't want to let people down.  This is a show that demands perfection and perfection is hard to achieve.

It is all kind of fake, though?  Right?  I'm not crazy about that.  This is a documentary that doesn't want to just be a special feature for a DVD or something.  Someone wanted this to be a worthy film-length Stranger Things adjacent property that people tuned into.  I get it.  But, really, it all feels like it was going to go the way it was going to go the entire time.  Yes, the stress is real.  I don't deny that the stress is real.  You have a lot of people at the top of their game making something that has real expectations to it.  But this isn't a story about how personalities clashed.  This isn't a story about doing the impossible.  From moment one, you had a lot of people who knew that this was going to be a challenging job technically and that the projects had large expectations.  But this wouldn't be a documentary about a failed Stranger Things play.  Netflix wouldn't release something like that.  They would have buried this special feature in the annals of the Netflix basement and we wouldn't have heard of it.  Instead, we get this heightened sense of urgency as the play kept going.  I'm going to cite the conclusion of the film to make my point.  There's a scene where the actors are watching the monitors and "oohing" and "ahhhing" special effects that are working.  From their perspective, they've seen these things go off every night.  That reaction is absolutely impossible in real ways.  They can be excited that things are going well.  But the idea that they are mesmorized by these special effects when they've had eight weeks of tech is kind of silly.  It's all for the sake of storytelling.  Halpern mined every bit of stress and anxiety for the film and probably left a lot of the boring, sitting-around-and-having-fun moments to the cutting room floor.  It's far more interesting thinking that this entire, big-budget production was going to fall on its face.

Which all returns me to the "why" of it all.  I don't know what to tell you, but I think I would have found this far more interesting to make this about Death of a Salesman or something like that.  Again, I'm a huge snob.  But what Stranger Things offers me, from a documentary perspective, is a binary.  Did the special effect thing work or didn't it?  Did audiences like the story or not?  Instead, there's nothing in this movie about nuance of performance.  We had moments where actors apologize for line deliveries, but what those moments are more concerned with are "Did the line get delivered properly so that an effect can work?"  Yeah, it's a tech heavy show.  People seemed to be more concerned on whether or not people got scared during the performance than actually moved by the events on the stage.  What I'm dancing around is the argument between high art and low art and I really don't want to be swimming around in those waters.  Yeah, I liked when David Harbour gave the new kid Hopper's hat because he did such a good job.  That's fun. But it also is very scripted.  What if Harbour brought the hat and the kid sucked?  Do you think that Netflix wouldn't want that moment anyway?  

I do say that it makes me want to watch the show, even though I've seen a lot of the technical elements on my screen at home.  I like Stranger Things.  I'm not part of the fandom like my kids are, but I find the story interesting.  Still, I don't know if my soul would be filled from watching it versus the itch in my nerd brain would be scratched.  

​But it still looks fun...