Stranger Things works a lot of well-tilled plots, familiar riffs from countless 80s horror and (predominantly) sci-fi films. But it also taps into real-life horrors that were playing out in the media in the early 1980s; the highly-publicized abductions of children, the rise of conspiracies over child trafficking, organized pedophilia and government coverups and the role of 24-hour TV news in feeding the fear over what seemed like a new plague descending over the country.
