'Stranger Things' season 4 review: The horror series ends the season in a thrilling and action-packed way

When the inaugural season of 'Stranger Things' released, I was not a fan. I love homages to classic horror as much as any love of spooky cinema, but the show had little personality of its own. Rather, it appeared to be a mish-mash of movies and books like 'The Goonies' and 'It' and filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, often venturing into the territory of derivative.

References do not alone make for good television. There has to be something new, good storytelling, writing, and character work that the show was missing, I thought. My opinion stayed the same as the show entered its second season. It was in the third season that to me the show felt like its own thing, instead of a homage-fest.

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But it is season 4 that has turned me into an out-and-out 'Stranger Things' fan. Right now, the show is the best horror TV series around.

The last season ended with our heroes scattered. While Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) moved to California to live with the Byers, others like Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin), are still in Hawkins, Indiana, the main setting of the show.

In the volume 1 of season 4, a new threat emerges from the hellish dimension Upside Down. Called Vecna, he is killing teenagers. And the way this entity murders is just brutal. Season 4 is the most terrifying the show has been.

In the end, in the sixth episode that is, our heroes figure out that Vecna is actually Henry (Jamie Campbell Bower). Henry was a fellow participant in the experiments carried out by Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) and the CIA. When young, Eleven became distressed by Henry's murderous ambitions and sent him to Upside Down.

Volume 2 of season 4 is made up of two episodes. The children (if they are still that as most of them are over 18)in Indiana and California, and the grown ups in Russia (Hopper, Joyce, and their Russian allies) band up to take down the Vecna and close the access to and from Upside Down once and for all.

First off, these are extremely long episodes. While the seventh episode titled "Papa" goes on for 85 minutes, which is less than the preceding episode (98 minutes), the ninth episode ("The Piggyback"), also the finale, clocks exactly 150 minutes, which is longer than most feature-length movies today.

The episodes do, indeed, feel long. This issue of protracted runtime has plagued Netflix originals in the past. This makes me think this is mandated, and that the streamer probably gains -- or thinks it gains -- that precious viewership by stretching the runtime needlessly. A lot of stuff does happen, make no mistake, but it is nowhere near enough to excuse the slog.

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With that said, both episodes conclude the season in a thrilling, entertaining way. The quality of the production, particularly CGI, is also much improved. Sluggish pace aside, the show does benefit in a few indulging moments that help flesh out the characters. The mythology that the show introduced to pop culture also feels more logical now.

Also, this season, the show has not just piled on nostalgia, but actually engaged with it. Sure, the show says, the 70s and 80s were great, but there were also fears about sinister cults, Satan's alleged influence and so on over the then-modern generation over harmless hobbies like tabletop RPGs.

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In the world of 'Stranger Things', the scary thing is not just Upside Down and the fiends inhabiting it, it is the quotidian things like bigotry that truly end up chilling us to the bone. This is why movies like 'Get Out' and 'Hereditary' carry more fright quotient than, say, 'The Conjuring' movies, for they engage with our real-world fears. The horror does not end when we stop watching those movies and switch off the device. It stays.

'Stranger Things' season 4 is a winner, and speaking as a former sceptic, I wish the next season were already here. I could certainly do with leaner runtimes, though.