Stranger Things Creators Reveal Season 4 Horror Influences

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1. A new evil is turning things upside down in Hawkins. Stranger Things 4 introduces Victor Creel (A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund) as Victor Creel, a patient at Pennhurst Mental Hospital who believes a vengeful demon murdered his family in 1959. Except the Freddy Krueger actor isn’t the big bad terrorizing and traumatizing the teenagers of Hawkins, Indiana: it’s the supernatural villain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), born Henry Creel, Victor’s telekinetic and telepathic son lording over a hellish mindscape bleeding out of the Upside Down and into Hawkins. 

In an interview with NME, Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers revealed the horror inspirations of Season 4, including Englund’s role as a dream-haunting teen serial killer in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. 

“The biggest influences would probably be A Nightmare On Elm Street One and [A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors], Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, weirdly The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn,” said Ross Duffer of the 2000 sci-fi thriller about an FBI agent who uses an experimental technology to probe the mind of a comatose killer. “There’s IT too. The mini-series from 1990 with Tim Curry’s Pennywise scared us, maybe more than anything else, so we talked about that a lot and why that messed us up as much as it did.”

Englund’s guest-starring role in a season about a supernatural evil preying on his victims’ subconscious minds may be stunt casting, but the Stranger Things creators say they can’t take credit. “I wish we had been brilliant enough to think about it,” Ross said, revealing Englund auditioned. Added Matt Duffer with a laugh, “I cannot tell you how surreal it is to be watching audition tape after audition tape and then suddenly you go, ‘Is that Robert Englund in a bathtub?’” 

“It’s just a dream come true to work with him, but then for people to also see him in a role that wasn’t just Freddy Krueger,” Ross said, adding Englund’s role as a father framed for his family’s murder “is really emotional and really effective.”

Stranger Things 4 stars Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), David Harbour (Jim Hopper), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven/Jane), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Joe Keery (Steve Harrington), Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Brett Gelman (Murray), Matthew Modine (Dr. Brenner), Robert Englund (Victor Creel), and Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna). 

Stranger Things 4: Volume 1 is now streaming on Netflix. Stranger Things 4: Volume 2 premieres July 1.