Stranger Things Season 5

The official teaser for the fifth and final season of Netflix’s hit sci-fi tv series Stranger Things came out last week. Using a classic Deep Purple song, it delivers adrenaline and goosebumps.

At the start of the trailer we see character Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) at the local radio station. He’s cranking up the volume on some machinery (we see a decibel meter - measuring loudness - climbing higher), and by 0:10 the sound of an ominously warbling synthesizer chord fades in along with drums playing a steady military beat (this is the rhythm from the interlude of Deep Purple’s 1968 classic “Child in Time”).

At 0:20 we cut to a military bunker, where tense residents of Hawkins Indiana are gathered. The drums are deep and rumbling, and the bunker lights flicker. It’s a long slow buildup. What’s happening here musically is a technique from electronic dance music, slowly opening a low-pass filter so that at first we hear only the low pitches and then by 0:38 all the higher pitches are added.

At the same time there is a voiceover counting down from five, but when they reach two, at 0:36, they say “and” instead of one, at the same moment we see Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) feeling a tingle on his neck–a reference to his connection to the Upside Down alternate dimension. Now added to the drums we also hear electric guitar, strings and organ. It’s become a full-on orchestral/progressive rock adaptation of “Child in Time.”

From 0:41 we’re seeing shots of Hawkins Indiana, now under military quarantine. And at 0:47 there’s the grave of Eddie Munson, the _Stranger Things _character who died heroically while playing an epic guitar solo in the finale of Season 4. Then at 0:55 the crying falsetto vocal melody from “Child in Time” comes in, while we see soldiers shooting fire through the portal to the Upside Down.

At 1:22 we hear Deep Purple’s singer Ian Gillian singing the line “I wanna hear you sing.” This is at a moment when (in a tip of the hat to the Jurassic Park raptor in the kitchen scene) Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and some kids are silently hiding from monsters in a warehouse. Probably not a good time for the characters to sing!

While this trailer has been hinting at the Deep Purple song up to this point, the introduction of lyrics really brings the song to life. What happens next is one of those examples of brilliant trailer editing of visual and musical timing. In “Child in Time,” the line “I wanna hear you sing” leads right into some operatic wailing, and that part of the song is timed to align with a shot of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) at 1:27 screaming uncontrollably. Immediately afterwards we see a line of soldiers firing machine guns at 1:28 which rhythmically mimic the sounds of the snare drum we are hearing.

Usually by this point in an action-packed trailer we expect to have a cut to silence, to ease the pressure and start building the intensity back up. And that’s what happens next but it is subtle - at 1:36 we see a woman and a child holding their breath in a container of water as they hide from a monster. The music becomes muffled and faint here, as if we the audience are also hearing the music from underwater.

The music stays in the background briefly, leaving space for a short voiceover possibly from police chief Hopper (David Harbour). The music builds back up to 1:58 when Hopper sets off two grenades and a ferocious guitar solo enters to accompany a blisteringly fast montage of action shots - nearly 20 scenes in under 10 seconds.

At 2:13, the meter showing decibels hits 100dB and we cut to silence and a black screen. A few seconds later, the deep booming voice of the villain Vecna delivers the obligatory turn phrase, “Found you.” Then, to deliver an epic ending musically, at 2:19 over the title card we have a barrage of drums, and two chords from organ and choir, referencing one last time the melody from “Child in Time.”

This is yet another great example of a trailer in which the choice of cover song matches the era, emotion and story of the visuals, completely. We only hear five words of the lyrics, but the rest of the song aligns brilliantly too. “Sweet child, in time you’ll see the line that’s drawn between good and bad”--that sure hits home for a coming-of-age series about teenagers grappling with the rift between our world and an evil alternate dimension.

_Stranger Things _Season 5 streams on Netflix starting November 26.

— Jack Hui Litster