Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things

Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things is the latest immersive experience by the ambitious, cult-followed Secret Cinema. They’ve been putting on themed cinematic and televisual experiences since 2007, creating participatory worlds straight out of your favourite shows and movies.

They give you a character before you arrive, you dress for the part and turn up to be an audience member with a difference. An audience member who’s part of the piece. An extra who’s allowed to talk as much as they like and drink and eat snacks whenever they want. You're an extra extra.

The interactive world they’ve created this time zaps you into the Stranger Things universe. You’re invited to the Hawkins High reunion (the fictional school attended by the show’s main characters) on Independence Day. As returning students, each guest is assigned a clique in advance. You’re also given your mission for the evening, the sketchy details of a mystery it’s your job to solve throughout the night.

As you, 80s-attired and hopefully with a couple of buddies by your side, seek to put together the pieces of your puzzle, you meet all the characters from the show, some involved with your mystery, some not, some propelling the overarching narrative of the evening towards the night’s show-stopping—and secret—finale.

Secret Cinema evenings traditionally end with a screening of the film in question. With three seasons of Stranger Things, this wasn’t possible. The workaround they’ve come up with is inspired. And secret.

Set in a Spielbergian vision of 80s small-town America, the Netflix series is all about normal folk getting wrapped up in sci-fi mysteries; kids facing down authority with only idealism and friendship on their side, and heaps and heaps of nostalgia. It’s perfect thematic fodder for Secret Cinema, which is all about nostalgia and allowing adults to act like kids again, exploring fictional worlds they feel they know every inch of.

As well as the series’ main themes providing a fitting home, the world of Stranger Things offers an ideal setting for an immersive experience like Secret Cinema. It’s stylised and stylish, precise yet cartoonish, rich in real-world details and underlying mystery. There’s a wholesome sheen to the 1980s small-town USA depicted that is ready to flip into all-out horror at any moment.

It’s in that tension that Secret Cinema pitches the evening. The all-smiles idealism and bunting-hung patriotism of the American fairground are pretty sinister to begin with. So too is the maxed-out consumerism of the 1980s playground mall. All it needs is a little push. The illusion can’t hold. Put simply, Secret Cinema gets two worlds for the price of one from Stranger Things.

Some might suggest that Stranger Things isn’t established or well-worn enough to deserve/need/benefit from the Secret Cinema experience. They may well be right. Compared with what has come before it, Stranger Things can’t claim to have anywhere near as much longevity. Arguably it doesn’t have the same cultural clout as the worlds Secret Cinema has explored before.

But Stranger Things itself is a nostalgic undertaking, it is inspired by the films, games, clothes and music of the 80s, and references its inspirations throughout. It provides nostalgia a step removed by pastiching, recreating that which it loves. Just as Secret Cinema does. And as the company’s first attempt at building a world based on a cultural title that is still an ongoing concern, it works well.

Certainly, out of all the TV shows out there right now, Stranger Things seems the best placed to benefit from the Secret Cinema treatment, catering to audience members who want to get wrapped up in the fictional world they love and dream of exploring it from top to bottom.

The storytelling is filled with easter eggs, referencing the series while also moving into uncharted territory. The idea of separating the audience into different groups, with each group getting a different mystery to explore is clever.

Some people seemed genuinely confused by the whole thing. With so many stories taking place across the same scene, they seemed to get caught midway between the task assigned to them and wanting simply to explore. They eventually found themselves following three narratives at the same time and promptly gave up.

But it’s not hard to follow if you take your time and keep general exploration and story-solving separate from one another. The seemingly spontaneous scenes that break out between cast and audience members are fun. It’s pretty thrilling having Will tell you he’s found a clue, follow me, and then deliberately lose you in a sea of Hawkins residents.

But when it gets busier and the crowd around each character is 5-10 people deep...you don’t feel like you’re in Hawkins anymore. You feel like you’re in London. Get there early and go character-spotting as soon as you arrive. It’s not about the cocktails, of course. But they taste like they’ve been mixed by the kids from the show, not dissimilar to some fruity-tasting fizz made from all the sodas in Dustin’s fridge.

The finale is the best thing about the evening, as finales should be. As soon as the BLANK goes BLANK and the BLANK does a BLANK and you think it’s BLANK, but it’s actually BLANK...it’s pretty damn BLANK.