It tried a little too hard and it was a direct ripoff of Stranger Things, as far as the dynamic with the time period and the group of kids. They even crow-bared a chubby, humorous, curly headed teen into the mix. The ending was satisfying, however. So I will call this an uneven effort. Some stupid dialog, a few bad or miscast characters but a watchable creation. I will say that when it ended and I saw the "Gunpowder & Sky" logo, I immediately blasted a few Aimee Mann songs. So if nothing else, the company who made this was inspired by one of the greatest songstresses of all time.

That's kind of a trope of the genre - The Goonies, The Sandlot, Stand by Me, they've all got a kid like that (well, O'Connell had a buzzcut, but still)

@Kewl_Kat said:

It tried a little too hard and it was a direct ripoff of Stranger Things, as far as the dynamic with the time period and the group of kids. They even crow-bared a chubby, humorous, curly headed teen into the mix. The ending was satisfying, however. So I will call this an uneven effort.

I thought it was terribly slow to start, and the third act went nowhere fast. All adults in the movie seemed to have lost their brains during that final night. And why leave it open-ended? It's like they blindly copied Stranger Things so closely that they left this movie open for a second season. It doesn't work that way...