30 Shows and Movies Like Stranger Things You Need to Watch
Stranger Things is an American horror science fiction television series, created by brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, broadcasted since July 15, 2016 on Netflix. The atmosphere of the series is strongly inspired by the fantastic and science fiction films of the 1980s, drawing its influences from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, John Hughes and Stephen King. While we wait for new episodes of the show, here is a list of 30 series and movies you’ll love if you’re a fan of Stranger Things. We are going to bring you a list of 15 series and 15 movies, separated into two individual categories.
Best shows like Stranger Things
1. It
Original Run: November 18 – November 20, 1990
Episodes: 2
In the opening scene, we see a little girl named Laurie Anne (Chelan Simmons) happily riding her tricycle, when her mother notices a storm brewing and tells her to get inside. Before the girl does, she hears the laughter of some children and a clown, she turns around and sees said clown, who plays with her to attract her. Later her mother goes looking for her and, horrified, finds her dead.
This leads Mike Hanlon to call his six childhood friends to tell them that the killer is back and thus make them keep his promise that if It came back they would come back too. He and his friends begin to have flashbacks throughout the miniseries.
2. Dark
Original Run: December 1, 2017 – June 27, 2020
Episodes: 36
In 2019, police officer Ulrich Nielsen desperately searches for his missing 12-year-old son, Mikkel. Thirty-three years earlier, in 1986, it was his younger brother Mads who had disappeared in equally mysterious circumstances. In the town of Winden, four families, traumatized by this disappearance, try to solve the mysteries that surround the region.
Jonas Kahnwald is also marked by this affair, as well as by the suicide of his father. He tries to find out more. The investigations of the police and some residents bring to light a story that begins again every thirty-three years. Events taking place in 1953, 1986, and 2019 are closely linked. The research carried out to find the culprit of these disappearances will gradually reveal the secrets of the peaceful little town.
3. I Am Not Okay with This
Original Run: February 26, 2020
Episodes: 7
The tribulations of a teenager who has to deal with her relationships with her high school classmates. She must also deal with her somewhat strange family and apprehend the discovery of her sexuality. At the same time, she discovers the powers residing deep within her.
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Original Run: March 10, 1997 – May 20, 2003
Episodes: 144
Buffy Summers, the active Vampire Slayer, has just moved to Sunnydale with her mother and meets her new Watcher, Rupert Giles, the high school librarian. This establishment is located on the Hellmouth, which attracts all kinds of demonic creatures to town (vampires, hyenas, Moloch (a demon), a killer puppet, an ogre, a sociopath, an Inca mummy, reptilian demons, a bogeyman, fish-men, high school ghosts, hellhounds, etc.) and various paranormal phenomena.
Buffy befriends two other high school students, Willow Rosenberg and Alexander Harris, and together they engage in the fight against the Master, a very old and powerful vampire who tries to open the Hellmouth. They are helped by the mysterious Angel, who later turns out to be a vampire with a soul, and Buffy ends up eliminating the Master, not without being clinically dead herself for a few seconds.
5. Eerie, Indiana
Original Run: September 15, 1991 – April 12, 1992
Episodes: 19
The plot sees the family of 15-year-old Marshall Teller moving from New Jersey to Eerie, Indiana, to a small town where strange things happen like objects disappearing and dogs talking. The other characters are the boy’s mother, Marilyn, and her father Edgar, an inventor in his spare time; her older sister Syndi and her friend Simon Holmes.
Some episodes have had the prestigious signature of Joe Dante. Despite the small number of episodes and their brevity, the serial had a considerable following of fans in the United States. The series, in fact, also had a sequel in 1998 (Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension), which did not repeat the same success.
6. Russian Doll
Original Run: February 1, 2019 – present
Episodes: 15
A girl named Nadia celebrates her 36th birthday. There she finds a guy and invites him to her house, but after sex, she quickly sends him out and goes to a nearby store in search of her cat. Nadia notices him sitting in the park across the road, she joyfully steps towards him – and then she is hit by a car. However, when she opens her eyes, she finds herself back at the party. All this happens, again and again, forcing Nadia to figure out what’s wrong.
7. Black Mirror
Original Run: December 4, 2011 – present
Episodes: 22
Each episode is independent, and the common thread of each is the advancement and progression of new technologies, the addiction to them, and their side effects. Different situations of the modern or future world are imagined and recreated in which a new technological invention or a paradoxical but realistic idea has somehow destabilized society and human feelings.
8. Misfits
Original Run: November 12, 2009 – December 11, 2013
Episodes: 37
Nathan Young, Simon Bellamy, Kelly Bailey, Curtis Donovan, and Alisha Daniels are five young adults who have been sentenced, for various reasons, to community service (TIG). As they perform on their first day, not without provoking Tony Morecombe, their supervisor, a violent storm breaks out. They are then struck by lightning.
Very quickly, they will realize that they now have superpowers. But, they will also realize that they are not the only ones who have changed. Tony, gone completely mad, will try to assassinate them. In mortal danger, they will have no choice but to strike him first and kill him. Following this murder, which they refuse to reveal, a long series of misadventures ensues.
The five young people will have to try to hide their crime, moving the body according to the police searches, using the missing person’s credit card to deceive his relatives and make them believe that he simply left. But also, they will have to learn to trust each other.
9. Castle Rock
Original Run: July 25, 2018 – December 11, 2019
Episodes: 20
In the town of Castle Rock, Maine, an individual is found locked up in the basement of Shawshank prison. The wing of the prison where he was found has been closed for a long time, the Kid seems confused and only mentions the name of Henry Deaver, a lawyer for the death row inmates.
A tribute to the novel Misery, Season 2 of the series features the arrival of budding psychopath Annie Wilkes with her daughter in Castle Rock as a feud between two rival clans escalates and the four-hundredth anniversary celebration of the small town is getting ready. The young nurse, coldly received by the locals, does not intend to be intimidated.
10. Yellowjackets
Original Run: November 14, 2021 – present
Episodes: 10
In 1996, a team of female soccer players from New Jersey traveled to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere and the other members of the team must survive for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to survive while following their current lives in 2021.
11. Gravity Falls
Original Run: June 15, 2012 – February 15, 2016
Episodes: 40
The show chronicles the adventures of 12-year-old Pines twins, brother Dipper, and sister Mabel, of Piedmont, California, whose summer plans are disrupted when their parents send them away. at their great-uncle, Stan’s in Gravity Falls, a small town in Oregon. Uncle Stan shows Mabel and Dipper around the “Mystery Shack”.
It is his home and his workplace; an overpriced tourist trap where unfortunate visitors discover a museum of oddities charged at a high price. Dipper and Mabel discover a journal containing all the mysteries of this town. They soon realize that Gravity Falls holds many secrets and they will team up with their new friends to find out what is really going on there.
Rolling into their new home for the summer, the bewildered twins try to adjust to their strange surroundings, especially to their Uncle Stan, whose insatiable appetite for money drives him to turn every opportunity into a financial advantage. As Dipper grumbles at the thought of the routine work that awaits him at Uncle Stan’s shop, his unwaveringly optimistic twin sister seizes his chance for a once-in-a-lifetime summer romance.
12. The Society
Original Run: May 10, 2019
Episodes: 10
Due to an unbearable odor in the small town of West Ham, high school students are temporarily evacuated from the town. When they return that same evening, however, they find no one there. Parents, siblings, and other residents seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.
Telecommunications are also only possible within the city limits. In addition, the entire city suddenly seems to be surrounded by seemingly endless forests. It quickly becomes apparent that the young people are on their own and have to set new rules for living together in order to survive.
13. Riverdale
Original Run: January 26, 2017 – present
Episodes: 110
It’s back to school in the small town of Riverdale, which is slowly recovering from the tragic passing of young Jason Blossom. This return to school is a new beginning for Archie Andrews who has decided to pursue a career in music despite the end of his secret relationship with his music teacher who serves as his mentor and the fragility of his friendship with his best friend Jughead Jones.
For her part, her best friend Betty Cooper, secretly in love with Archie, has to face her over-protective mother who drugs her. But everything will begin to change for her when she meets Veronica Lodge, a new and wealthy student who arrives in town following a scandal that has closely affected her family. But all of this is only part of the many stories and secrets that inhabit Riverdale, a calm and picture-perfect town, but one that hides in the shadows many dangers and a very dark side.
14. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Original Run: October 26, 2018 – December 31, 2020
Episodes: 36
Sabrina Spellman is a teenager almost like the others: she was born following the relationship between a wizard and a mortal, which makes her a hybrid. She lives in the small town of Greendale, raised by her two paternal aunts, Hilda and Zelda, and attends the town’s high school with deadly teenagers.
However, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, she must make a choice: accept being baptized to become a member of the satanic Church of Night or give up and continue her life alongside mortals but with few powers. She will also have to face evil forces that threaten her family and the mortal world because, in the shadows, the horrible Madam Satan is ready to do anything to help Devil recruit the young girl.
15. The Real Ghostbusters
Original Release: September 13, 1986 – October 5, 1991
Episodes: 140
The adventures of three researchers in parapsychology (Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, and Egon Spengler) who found a company for exterminating ghosts, the Ghostbusters. In this adventure, they recruit Winston Zeddemore, ghost hunter, and Janine Melnitz, company secretary. The series serves as an animated continuation of the first movie.
Best movies like Stranger Things
1. Ghostbusters
Original Release: June 8, 1984
Running Time: 105 minutes
Doctors Peter Venkman, Raymond “Ray” Stantz, and Egon Spengler, researchers at Columbia University in New York specializing in parapsychology, are accused of carrying out bizarre research. Stripped of their post by the dean of the university, they then decide to open a paranormal investigation company called “Ghostbusters“.
Committing their last funds to this activity, they buy an old abandoned New York fire station, which they renovate and modify, and set off to chase paranormal phenomena all over the city at the wheel of their Ectomobile “Ecto 1 ”, a white Cadillac decorated with their company logo. Taking advantage of the resurgence of ectoplasmic appearances which suddenly assails New York City, the three friends are soon overwhelmed during their activity as ghost hunters and become local stars, their interventions being relayed in the media.
However, they are also attracting the attention of authorities, in particular Walter Peck, a member of the Environmental Protection Commission (EPA) who takes them in disapproval and who will try to put obstacles in their way. At the same time, Dana Barrett, a New York cellist, discovers that paranormal events are happening in her apartment in Central Park West. Distraught, she asks for the help of the company Ghostbusters, having seen on television the advertisement for their company.
Doctor Peter Venkman, attracted by this young and attractive bachelor, takes charge of his business while trying to make her succumb to his charm. Joined by a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore, the Ghostbusters soon become the city’s only hope in the face of the threat of Gozer, a malevolent Sumerian god who tries to enter our world through a dimensional portal perched on top of a building. New Yorker (the same where Dana and her next-door neighbor, accountant Louis Tully live), built to plans by an architect loyal to Gozer.
2. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Original Release: May 26, 1982
Running Time: 120 minutes
Aliens land in a forest near Los Angeles and collect plant samples. When a group of government agents suddenly appears, the aliens hastily flee into their spaceship. In doing so, they inadvertently leave behind one of their companions who had gone further away. The little alien seeks shelter in the shed of a house in the nearby suburb. There he is discovered by ten-year-old Elliott, who lives in the house with his mother and siblings.
A close friendship quickly develops between him and the little visitor. Both are lonely: Elliott misses his father, who recently left the family, and E.T. misses his companions who left him “3 million light years from home” on Earth. E.T. begins to learn a human language like a child, and he and Elliott share adventures that range from comic to tragic as E.T. expresses his homesickness by wanting to “phone home”.
As E.T. wants to demonstrate to the children that he comes from outer space, he shows telekinetic abilities: he can levitate objects and revive plants. He builds a makeshift radio transmitter from toys and other small parts, which he sets up in the forest with Elliott’s help to send a signal to his spaceship.
3. It
Original Release: September 5, 2017
Running Time: 135 minutes
In Derry, Maine, seven teenagers struggling to fit in have come together to form the “Failers’ Club.” Rejected by their comrades, they are the favorite targets of the tough guys at school. They also have in common the fact of having experienced their greatest terror in the face of a terrible shapeshifting clown which they call “It”.
Because Derry has always been plagued by a creature that emerges from the sewers every 27 years to feed on the terrors of its victims of choice: children. Determined to stay united, the Losers try to overcome their fears to stop a new vicious cycle. A cycle began one rainy day when a little boy chasing his paper boat came face-to-face with a clown by the name of Pennywise.
4. Stand by Me
Original Release: August 8, 1986
Running Time: 89 minutes
Gordon “Gordie” Lachance reads in a newspaper about Chris Chambers’ death and looks back on an adventure that happened in the summer of 1959: Gordie, Chris, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio are four 12-year-old friends living in the small Oregon town of Castle Rock and prepare to move on to the gymnasium.
One day Vern, looking for some money he had buried, overhears a conversation between his older brother Billy and a friend. He thus learns that the two, after stealing a car to take a ride outside the city, accidentally came across the body of a boy and did not report the discovery to the police due to the theft just committed.
Vern runs to tell his friends, who guess it is the body of Ray Brower, a boy who disappeared three days earlier after leaving Castle Rock to pick blueberries. The four boys, driven by the desire – each for a different reason – to redeem themselves and become heroes in the eyes of all, decide to go in search of the body and set out along the railway tracks. This adventure will allow them to confront and grow internally.
Eventually, after overcoming a thousand obstacles, they find the body. At that point, they clash with the older boys who had originally found the body, including bully Ace Merrill. Thanks to their courage, the four friends manage to get the better off and drive them away, but during the journey, they have matured to the point that they think that an anonymous phone call to the police is the best way to resolve the matter.
The narrative returns to the beginning of the film: Gordie, now an adult and with children, decides to write a new novel, in which he tells the story of the journey he made as a boy in search of the body of Ray Brower.
5. Halloween
Original Release: October 25, 1978
Running Time: 91 minutes
In the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, six-year-old Michael Myers murders his sister with a kitchen knife. He is interned until his majority to then be judged. However, at the age of twenty-one, when he is transferred for his trial, he manages to escape and takes the road to his native town. A succession of murders then occurs. His psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis, sets off in pursuit.
6. The Goonies
Original Release: June 7, 1985
Running Time: 114 minutes
Astoria, autumn 1985. While the terrible Fratelli escapes from prison; Mikey, Brand, Chunk, and Mouth, a group of friends, find in the attic of the first an old treasure map leading to the pirate “One-Eyed Willy”. While their neighborhood will soon be razed by developer Elgin Perkins to be replaced by a golf course, the boys decide to go in search of the loot to avoid the destruction of the houses.
Soon caught up by Brand, Mikey’s brother, and two friends, Steph and Andy, the “Goonies”, following their map, arrive and enter an old restaurant by sea without knowing that the place is already occupied by the Fratellis. on the run. Their adventure continues underground to “One-Eyed Willy’s” pirate ship and its famous treasure.
7. Weird Science
Original Release: August 2, 1985
Running Time: 94 minutes
Gary and Wyatt are two very clumsy teenagers, especially with girls and they often become the object of ridicule by their peers Ian and Max. One day, after watching a Frankenstein movie on TV, they decide to create the woman ideal using Wyatt’s computer; Lisa turns up, a beautiful and practically perfect girl, who will prove to be endowed with extraordinary powers.
Thus, for Gary and Wyatt, a series of exciting adventures begins, that will lead them to mature and find self-confidence, managing, thanks to the help of Lisa, to win the hearts of two of their peers, to gain popularity among their classmates, and suddenly Mr. Masterson becomes more malleable towards them. Eventually, it turns out that Gary and Wyatt’s popularity happens “magically” because Lisa used her superpowers to help the boys integrate.
8. The Fear Street Trilogy
Original Release: July 2021
Running Time: 330 minutes
In the small town of Shadyside, there has been a series of murders for decades. The city is considered a crime hotspot in the USA, while the neighboring town, Sunnyvale, has no crime. Regularly, people suddenly go insane and start committing crimes. A number of previous killers seem to be resurrected to eliminate more people.
Sam is supposed to be the next victim, but her friends want to prevent that. In 1994, Deena and Josh Johnson go to Christine Berman’s house to ask for her help as Deena’s friend Sam is possessed. After Christine “Ziggy” Berman lets them in, she recounts what happened at Camp Nightwing in 1978 and her sister’s death.
Deena has a vision that reveals the last days of Sarah Fier’s life in 1666. This tells her who is really behind the curse. Together with others, she tries to put an end to it all with murder in the mall in 1994.
9. The Thing
Original Release: June 25, 1982
Running Time: 109 minutes
Members of an Antarctica-based research station discover that an alien creature has survived the crash of his ship. This very quickly testifies to its ability to parasitize and then assimilate all forms of life. Isolated from the world, no longer knowing who is contaminated and who is not, the men of the team will sink into fear and paranoia.
10. Ghostbusters II
Original Release: June 16, 1989
Running Time: 108 minutes
Vigo was a tyrant and a sorcerer hated by his people. Just before being slaughtered in 1610, he launched a prophecy announcing his return. His spirit haunts an evil painting that is restored at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Five years after saving the city from the onslaught of supernatural monsters and the arrival of an evil being from another dimension, former scientists Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, along with their associate Winston Zeddemore, are reduced to hosting birthday parties and presenting television shows for a living.
Meanwhile, a slimy, evil substance pours into the city’s sewers, leading straight to the museum that hosts the famous painting. Janosz Poha, the museum’s curator, is subject to orders from Vigo who orders him to find him a child to incarnate. The choice of Janosz then falls on Oscar, the son of Dana Barrett (the heroine of the first film).
11. It: Chapter Two
Original Release: August 26, 2019
Running Time: 169 minutes
In 1989, seven children managed to escape “It”, a shape-shifting creature devouring the children of Derry. Twenty-seven years later, Bill Denbrough and his friends return to Derry following Mike’s call. They will have to fight again the sinister clown “It”, who has awakened and is starting to feed on children again. When they return to Derry, they discover the true story of “It” and intend to finish it once and for all.
12. Predator
Original Release: June 12, 1987
Running Time: 107 minutes
A group of commandos is called in for a rescue mission in Central America led by Major Alan “Dutch” Schaeffer. The group is dropped off in Guatemala’s jungle inside the border in enemy territory to track down survivors of a shot down the helicopter.
13. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Original Release: November 9, 1984
Running Time: 91 minutes
In Wes Craven’s classic slasher film, several Midwestern teenagers fall prey to Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a disfigured midnight mangler who preys on the teenagers in their dreams — which, in turn, kills them in reality. After investigating the phenomenon, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) begins to suspect that a dark secret kept by her and her friends’ parents may be the key to unraveling the mystery, but can Nancy and her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) solve the puzzle before it’s too late?
14. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Original Release: August 23, 2021
Running Time: 124 minutes
Thirty-seven years after the “Manhattan Proton Crossing of 84”, Ghostbusters founding member Egon Spengler moved to Summerville, Oklahoma, where the mining operations of Gozerian cultist “Ivo Shandor” were located. Egon He captures a ghost in one of the mines, with the goal of using it to lure a larger ghost to his farm, where he has set a trap for him.
When the trap fails, he runs into his country house and hides the ghost trap in a secret spot on the ground. Egon sits in a chair as if he has accepted his fate when a mist creeps in and eliminates him. Egon’s estranged daughter, Callie, and her two sons, Trevor and Phoebe, are evicted from their home and forced to move to Egon’s farm in Summerville.
Trevor meets Lucky, a local girl who works at a restaurant (whom he falls in love with), and Phoebe is enrolled in summer school, where she leaves her under the care of Gary Grooberson, her eccentric science teacher. Janine Melnitz informs Callie that Egon left behind a mountain of debt. While going through Egon’s belongings, Phoebe discovers that her house is haunted and she discovers a PKE meter, and an invisible ghost leads her into a ghost trap, while Trevor finds the Ecto-1.
15. Alien
Original Release: May 25, 1979
Running Time: 117 minutes
During the Nostromo space freighter’s return trip after a routine trade mission, the crew, five men and two women who have been in hibernation for ten months are brought out of their lethargy earlier than expected by the spacecraft’s onboard computer.
The latter has indeed picked up unknown radio signals in space and, due to a clause attached to their navigation contract, the ship’s crew is required to check for any evidence of extraterrestrial life.
