A closer look
Duffer brothers originally used a heavily practical, terrifyingly realistic animatronic suit for the Demogorgon in the first season of Stranger Things to pay homage to the legendary practical effects of eighties horror cinema, but the actor inside the massive, cumbersome costume had to wear stilts and navigate the set completely blind, making it nearly impossible to actually move with any sort of menacing, otherworldly agility; they eventually had to rely heavily on computer-generated imagery in later seasons because the poor guy in the suit kept awkwardly tripping over props and ruining the intensely frightening atmosphere, so it is undeniably charming that Netflix spent an absolute fortune trying to resurrect the golden age of practical movie magic, only to discover that putting a blindfolded man on stilts inside a giant rubber flower-face monster is a fantastic recipe for physical comedy
