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Stranger Things has a habit of foreshadowing the future in the form of games. In season one it was Dungeons & Dragons and in season 2 it was Dragon's Lair, but in the first episode of season 3 they didn't play any game, and instead sneaked into a film with the help of Steve called Day of the Dead.
As with the format of the show, how does this film draw any parallels to the show? Or any foreshadowing?
There is one reference I could find in this article,
Day of the Dead was the third installment in director George A. Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead series and was described by Romero as a “tragedy about how a lack of human communication causes chaos and collapse even in this small little pie slice of society.”
This theme plays out later in Stranger Things season 3 when the three groups of Hawkins’ main players — El and her crew, the ice cream shop kids and the grown-ups — fail to communicate what they’ve learned about the Russians and the mysterious Mind Flayer shadow monster until it’s almost too late.
Day of the Dead is a third installment in the Night of the Living Dead series just like it is the third season of Stranger Things. We can also see a lack of communication among main characters like Romero described about his movie.
Day of the Dead is a 1985 American zombie horror film written and directed by George A. Romero.
AJ's answer is pretty spot on in terms of overall theme, but there are couple of plot points to add that are in parallel, including Day of the Dead is also a ZOMBIE film and the Mind Flayer was taking others like Billy, Heather, Tom, etc and using them to get things done...
Mild Spoilers About Billy
He then ran out of the mill and got back into his car, speeding away in a panic. He stopped at a payphone to call 911, but as soon as the phone picked up, he finds himself in the Upside Down, and a group of people emerging from the fog, slowly walking towards him. He was approached by a copy of himself, and asked what it wanted. It told him to "build what you see", referring to the zombie-like mob behind it, then suddenly he returned to the real world, clueless as to what happened.
The Mind Flayer's over all goal was/is to destroy El, her friends, and then the world! Day of the Dead poses the same apocalyptic zombie threat, which in theory, may be more relevant to Stranger Things season 4.
In addition, even though they weren't "zombies", Steve and Robin get into a situation where they are heavily drugged, and ultimately not acting like themselves for a couple of episodes. And the Russian assassin character, Grigori, may have been a reference to an evil Terminator featured in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goal. To clarify these two instances are depictions of these characters being somewhat "mindless" in nature, like zombies.
In an underground facility in the Everglades housing scientists and soldiers, the scientists are trying to find a solution to the zombie pandemic, in exchange for the soldiers' protection.
There is also the prospect that Day of Dead featured scenes with scientists in underground military bunkers that broadly parallel itself with Stranger Things scientists and more specifically, The Russian's underground facility in season 3.
