Duffer Brothers' 2007 Cannibal Film Resurfaces After Stranger Things Finale
The creators' forgotten horror short from film school has emerged online just weeks after the series wrapped, revealing surprising connections to the show's final episodes.
Two weeks after Stranger Things wrapped its five-season run, a forgotten piece of the Duffer Brothers' past has crawled out of the internet's depths. Their 2007 horror short film Eater, made during their student days at California's Dodge College, is now streaming free on YouTube thanks to horror site Bloody Disgusting.
The 18-minute cannibal thriller predates their Netflix breakthrough by a full decade. Matt and Ross Duffer wrote and directed this adaptation of Peter Crowther's short story while still learning their craft. The plot follows a rookie police officer working night duty when a deranged cannibal prisoner takes control of the station.
Familiar Faces Return
Emanuel Borria stars in the student film as the terrorized cop. Nearly two decades later, he reunited with the Duffers for Stranger Things' final season, appearing as Sergeant Luis Ramirez across three episodes. The casting choice wasn't coincidental.
But Borria represents just one thread connecting past and present. The series finale contains what appears to be a direct reference to the brothers' early work.
Hidden References in the Finale
During the epilogue of episode eight, four characters gather on a radio tower rooftop. Jonathan Byers mentions studying film at NYU and working on an "anti-capitalist cannibal movie" called The Consumer. The title choice seems deliberate.
Eater and Consumer share identical meanings. Both describe something that devours. The parallel has sparked fan theories about whether Jonathan's fictional project represents the Duffers acknowledging their own creative origins.
The connection runs deeper than wordplay. Both films explore cannibalism through different lenses, separated by nearly twenty years of filmmaking experience. What started as a student exercise in horror became a subtle callback in their career-defining series.