Written and directed by J. J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Star Trek), Super 8 pays homage to the old school sci-fi flicks of the ’70s. It’s a little bit like E.T. and Close Encounters, only with more explosions and violence. Set in 1979, the film takes place in a small Ohio town. It commences with a scene depicting the funeral for the mother of Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a well-mannered 13-year-old who has been coddled by his departed mom. His father Jackson (Kyle Chandler) is a police officer who takes his job more seriously than parenting. While he’s not abusive, he’s so stern, you wonder if he really loves the kid. Joe, however, has a good group of friends led by the chubby Charles (Riley Griffiths), who’s trying to enter a film he’s making into a competition. One night, he and Joe and a cadre of kids head to a train station to take some footage. They’ve recruited one of their classmates, a pretty young girl named Alice (Elle Fanning), to join them, and Joe is instantly smitten.
The filming is proceeding as planned, but when a train crashes, the kids find themselves in the middle of a national crisis. It turns out the train was carrying some kind of alien creature that has gotten loose and started to wreak havoc on the small town. Townspeople are disappearing and household pets are running away. Jackson takes it upon himself to try to get to the bottom of things, even if that means pissing off Air Force Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), who is leading the government’s investigation and does his best to keep the local authorities at bay. It’s not giving too much away to say that by the film’s ending, the town is trashed and Joe and the boys have to fight for their lives. The movie is certainly an effective period piece – it accurately captures the look and feel of the late ’70s. Its first half is effectively suspenseful, too. But the movie doesn’t hold up in the second hour (it’s about two hours long). Once we actually see the alien and learn its history, our disbelief can no longer be suspended.
-Jeff Niesel