17 Key Cinematic Influences On Stranger Things

2) Under The Skin

Another of the more modern reference points in Stranger Things is Jonathan Glazer’s cult 2014 sci-fi Under the Skin. Eleven doesn’t reflect that film’s predatorial ‘The Female’ in any way, though they are both ‘alien’ figures discovering the world for the first time. That aside, their stories are very different.

It’s when El goes into the sensory deprivation tank and we reach the dark psychic space between our world and the other that the Under the Skin influence becomes obvious. This nether region is depicted as an entirely black space, with the floor vacillating between a solid and a black pool of liquid. Only Eleven and her target are visible in the space, and these sequences are visually virtually identical to the scenes in Under the Skin wherein Scarlett Johansson’s alien captures her human victims.