In The Boroughs, growing old is both a thrilling adventure and a waking nightmare

In their Netflix hit Stranger Things, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer wove together a creature feature whose emotional crux stemmed from how, through the power of a found family, even the unlikeliest heroes can overcome a great evil. They were clearly inspired by ’80s fare like E.T. and The Goonies, so it’s not surprising that they’d lend their imprimatur to The Boroughs, which harkens to an earlier Steven Spielberg classic, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The duo simply can’t resist the tale of a tight-knit community riddled with supernatural secrets. (See also: this year’s Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen, which they also EP’d.) In this new sci-fi thriller, a misfit crew once more tries to save the day in the face of invading monsters, but the lens shifts from vulnerable teens in Hawkins, Ind., to the world-weary senior citizens at a retirement facility in the New Mexico desert. 

The narrative similarities between the two series are impossible to ignore, because The Boroughs rehashes Stranger Things’ familiar framework (which was, itself, a patchwork of video-store favorites), albeit less excitingly. Here, too, a core team investigates mysterious tunnels, sightings, and otherworldly terrors, using scientific experiments and makeshift weapons as their defense.  Meanwhile, The Boroughs‘ equivalents of Hopper, Joyce, and Steve embark on side quests that eventually prove key to defeating the big bad. Fortunately, co-creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance) avoid turning their series into a full-on “Stranger Things, but for the elderly” situation. The Boroughs has a distinct purpose because the protagonists are the opposite of angsty pre-teens. The show benefits from centering on a bunch of 60-year-olds challenging authority while grappling with later-life crises like aging pains, loneliness, and worrying about what kind of legacy they’ll leave behind.

 Plus, Alfred Molina is so gosh darn adorable as The Boroughs‘ anchor. The actor brings an innate sweetness to Sam Cooper, a recent widower and engineer who reluctantly moves to the show’s namesake community so as not to burden his adult daughter and her spouse (played by Jena Malone and Rafael Casal). Plagued by hallucinations of his dead wife, Sam slowly warms up to his new surroundings, just in time to be the sole witness to an entity—a less creepy version of Alien‘s Xenomorphs—sucking the life out of his new neighbor. Watching this horror unfold pushes Sam into a sinister (dare we say strange?) mystery about the retirement home, its suspicious owners (played by Seth Numrich and Alice Kremelberg), and their even murkier past. 

Thankfully, Sam gets assistance from some new friends, including former doctor Wally (Denis O’Hare) and retired reporter Judy (Alfre Woodard). Their grief motivates them to dig for answers, even if nobody else believes them about the existence of monsters literally lurking below the surface of The Boroughs. It’s easier to dismiss them as senile than to take them seriously. Another resident, Renee (a spectacular Geena Davis), joins forces with rookie security guard Paz (Carlos Miranda) to figure out what the owners are covering up and why they’re lying to everyone in their care, a team-up that leads to an unexpectedly charming onscreen romance. And then there’s Judy’s husband, Art (Clarke Peters), whose search for bliss in old age turns into a reckoning about the cycle of life itself