The fourth season of Stranger Things is a tribute to horror movies. And it is in more than one way. From the much darker tone and the direct references to Andrés Muschietti’s It and Ridley Scott’s Alien to its connotation of the sinister. The Netflix series shows its maturity with a direct look at the genre. But also through a detail that amazes fans. Including the enormous influence of Wes Craven and his classic Nightmare on Elm Street saga in the seasonal mystery. And that means including a big-name villain. Victor Creel, the murderer and the center of several of the Hawkins mysteries. And the character is played, nothing more and nothing less, by Robert Englund. The actor in charge of playing the fearsome Freddy Krueger in much of the Craven saga.
On this occasion, the Duffer brothers decided to recreate the condition of the terrifying through one of the icons of terror. And they do it in two more different ways. First of all, the Netflix series establishes that Hawkins is a cursed place. And not only because the facts are already known in previous installments. The new season looks at the fact that the town has a fair amount of skeletons in storage. And one of them has Creel House as its center, scenes of bloody events in the past.
It is then that the connection with Wes Craven becomes more unusual and deep. The owner of the house (in which mutilated animals were found and cruel infanticide occurred) returns in chapter four. Robert Englund’s Victor Creel returns to be very scary.
The darkness of Hawkins by the hand of Victor Creel
The mere presence of Robert Englund’s Vitor Creel completely changes the tone and pace of Stranger Things. It is not only a reflection of the character that made him famous — child murderer and also subject to the supernatural — but a point of interest in his speech. Creel House is the epicenter of all the connections to the past that Stranger Things establishes through symbols. It’s also a way of understanding the extent to which the series leaped in a whole new direction. One in which he will explore his mythology and will undoubtedly answer many of his most difficult questions.
Much more interesting still, the Victor Creel played by the actor, makes something specific clear. The fact that all the supernatural and fearsome events in Hawkins are not of recent date. Everything surrounding Creel House makes it clear that the supernatural’s influence on the series is longstanding. As much as to establish parallels and perceptions about the nature of the extraordinary in the series.
If until now everything inexplicable in Stranger Things seemed related to a large-scale conspiracy theory, season four changes the landscape. And especially, it highlights the fact that the town is linked in a total and complex way to a very specific type of darkness. And that is where Victor Creel is especially important.
From the horrors of the past arises a new path
In the new additions to the Stranger Things mythology, Creel House was the scene of unexplained events that ended in a series of murders. Its owner and the perpetrator of the events, Victor Creel became a dark legend in the town. In the same way, as in the mythology around Freddy Krueger, Creel ends up murdering children. And in the same way, he ends up collapsing in the dark due to such an act.
In Stranger Things, moreover, things get even murkier. Creel claims that she was killed due to the influence of a demonic creature. Do you mean then that everything that happened was due to the influence of something else? The Netflix series takes its time narrating the dilemma, but once it does, it unites the story of all four seasons into a single vision of fear. Perhaps the highest point of the season.