Stranger Things 4 Episode 2 Review – “Chapter Two: Vecna’s Curse”

Stranger Things 4 Episode 2 “Vecna’s Curse”
Written by The Duffer Brothers
Directed by The Duffer Brothers
Premiered May 27, 2022 on Netflix

With Chrissy’s death at the end of “The Hellfire Club”, and Mike’s arrival in California at the beginning of “Chapter Two: Vecna’s Curse”, Stranger Things 4 kicks off Spring Break ’84 – and for the most part, everybody’s having a shitty time. As one might expect, this makes for a particularly dour episode, one that starts to draw out some of the season’s deeper themes and stories in interesting ways (albeit slowly), though in ways that bring into question the massive scope of season four.

As the news of Chrissy’s death in the living room of Eddie’s uncle begins to make its way around Hawkins, “Vecna’s Curse” observes as the individual (and collective) anxieties begin to fester in the town’s teens, like the most cursed, tentacle-y version manifestation of puberty imaginable. More importantly, when Stranger Things 4 observes those anxieties and how they fester into despair – as the cop outside Eddie’s house notes, Hawkins’ inability to avoid tragedy may just mean its cursed – it makes for quite an ominous hour, especially when it shifts attention to Eleven’s climactic outburst, where she introduces Angela’s face to the bottom of a roller skate.

Eleven’s violent outburst is not only a reminder that she hasn’t exactly had the healthiest upbringing – it is a rather dramatic visual for the outcomes of letting these feelings fester, and how powerful those negative emotions become when we’re isolated. In “The Hellfire Club”, Max’s behavior provided a strong foundation for this theme; and though Eleven’s bully is a lot more archetypal, it lets “Vecna’s Curse” explore the allusive power of these negative feelings, grounded in the kind of insecurities it appears Hawkins’s latest curse is distinctly attracted to.

What’s less effective is the arc of Vecna’s second victim; where “The Hellfire Club” does a great job giving pathos to Chrissy in a few scenes, Fred’s brief emergence into the foreground of Stranger Things 4′s story is a lot less impactful, his guilt much vaguer and amorphous – which makes Vecna’s pursuit of him feel more like Big Mouth‘s Shame Monster than intended, less grounded in the human element of the story (as it felt with Chrissy, like her scenes with Max and Eddie), than in the superficial horrors of Vecna’s ability to seemingly reach through the Upside Down into the compromised, self-conscious minds of its teens.

The other sore spot of the episode is ol’ Jonathan Byers; does his romantic angst register with anyone in the audience? As him and Argyle make fart noises and smack golf balls at old cars, Jonathan expresses that he’s relieved Nancy didn’t come for a visit on spring break, and that he’s planning to go to a local college instead of the fancy Emerson College Nancy’s already committed to. All this while Nancy fumbles through a conversation with Fred about Jonathan while they drive to the trailer park Max and Eddie live in; neither scenes are convincing, and is the odd moment where it feels like Stranger Things 4 is fumbling with two of its main characters, reducing their relationship to a melodramatic plot point that rings hollow against the much larger, and much more convincing stories happening around them both.

By comparison, Lucas and El’s identity crises are much more engaging plot threads to pull on, especially as the two characters are isolated a bit from the safety nets of the original D&D club. But the moment these stories turn into something really dark and ominous – Eleven starting to awaken her old murderous self, Lucas hearing the phrase “Let’s beat freaks!” and not knowing how to react – Stranger Things has to cut away from them, because of Vecna, our introduction to Hopper’s experience in Russia, lesbian pining (boy, I am nervous for the fate of Robin’s crush!), Eleven’s lost powers, the whole “science experiment”, El’s bloody flashbacks, and Jason Carver, who has overtly become a Billy Hargrove-style secondary antagonist, as he tries to hunt down the supposed killer of his girlfriend, Eddie Munson.

It’s just a lot for an episode to handle, even one with another 70-plus minute running time. Outside of Henry’s horrific death on an empty Hawkins street, “Vecna’s Curse” leaves mot of its plots unresolved; we just leave everyone at the roller skating rink (where indignant Will is still annoyed at Eleven for lying to Mike) while Angela’s face bleeds, and the rest of the teen group revealing to Eddie the presence of the Upside Down.

It all adds up to a very, very ambitious show on paper; and though “Vecna’s Curse” is certainly entertaining in moments and welcomely creepy in others, the cumulation of mental gymnastics this episode requires across 70+ minutes dampens some of the show’s more meaningful moments. Stranger Things 4 is certainly off to the races this season – but its themes and character stories are applied a bit inconsistently across these extended running times, an uneven tempo that slightly undercuts some of the tensions it’s trying to build within its central narratives.

Grade: B

Other thoughts/observations:

• This show has a lot of random needle drops; “Amadeus” certainly ranks near the top of them.
  
• Vecna’s design comes from make up artist Barrie Gower, who worked on Game of Thrones.
  
• Victor Creel is mentioned as someone in a local mental hospital who killed his family… shades of elderly Jason Vorhees aside, anytime a creepy mental hospital gets involved is a solid thing.
  
• The kid with the video camera is such a parody, it hurts – especially when the rest of the material around his video camera-clutching and giggling is so fucking dark.
  
• Nobody wants to see Will’s sad painting? He’s been working on it for awhile.
  
• The military has touched down in Hawkins, introducing a new character (Lt. Sullivan). More plot!