Stranger Things – Season Five (2025) | TV REVIEW

Gaten Matarazzo as ‘Dustin’ in Stranger Things: Season Five — PHOTO: Netflix (Still image from trailers).

Regardless of what you think about the show or this season, I think you have to admire the gusto of the release strategy for the final season of Stranger Things, of which the first volume (episodes one to four) was released early in December, the second volume on Christmas, and the series finale on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day (depending on your region). Stranger Things really took over a huge chunk of the online entertainment focus in December, despite the fact that massive trailers for huge films were released alongside a new Avatar film in theaters around the world. They really made the three-part release of the show into events. But did the series finale of the most popular US-based Netflix original series, or the season as a whole, live up to the hype it created for itself? Well, let’s talk about it, because it’s not a straightforward answer. 

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REVIEW: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Alyssa Sutherland’s Ellie in Deadite-form in EVIL DEAD RISE — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Directed by Lee Cronin — Screenplay by Lee Cronin.

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead is one of my favorite horror franchises out there. I grew up watching Army of Darkness over and over again. This is a storied franchise capable of going both extremely gory and very zany. Yet in spite of the film series having been rebooted in 2013 by Fede Alvarez, it took another ten years for another Evil Dead film to come out (the franchise did continue as a relatively short-lived television series, though). Now, 30 years after the theatrical release of Army of Darkness and 10 years after the theatrical release of Alvarez’s Evil Dead, Irish writer-director Lee Cronin has been chosen to bring the deadites and the Book of the Dead into this decade, and he has done a brilliant job. Evil Dead Rise is a terrific continuation of the cult favorite franchise. Yes, it is indeed groovy. 

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