The kids version of CLOVERFIELD. A modern ET. The sci-fi version of GOONIES. This movie is a bit of a hodgepodge of classic Spielberg from the 80's and modern day JJ Abrams. It's no surprise that is was directed by Abrams and executive produced by Spielberg.
The story: Four months after his mom is killed in an industrial accident, a boy and his friends witness a train crash while making a Super 8 movie. It wasn't an accident -- one of their teachers deliberately drove his car onto the tracks to make the train crash. The air force comes in to clean it up, but strange things begin to happen -- power outages and disappearing animals and electronics. The kids realize that something got off the train -- something alien -- and now they and the Air Force are trying to find it.
Was it good?
It was good. Almost very good. This is definitely a movie I'm recommending, but it was also frustrating because I kept feeling that it should have been better.
The story starts out both slow and strong, telling the story of these kids. A boy who lost his mother but now has a crush on the daughter of the man people blame for her death (he called in sick because he was drunk so she had to go into work the day she was killed). The group of kids who are outcasts who are making this movie. It's simple but has some wonderful stuff. In fact one of the best scenes happens before the first big thing -- the train accident.
Oddly enough, while the train crash is exciting, afterwards everything goes almost back to normal. For another 10 minutes there's no tension to the story. The biggest question is whether or not one boy will let his friend blow up his model train for the movie. During this there is some conflict with the Air Force who are hiding things and weird power outages and things going missing, but they always take a back seat to the kids.
The problem is that none of these elements really mesh and it feels like Abrams is trying to force all these elements together -- the big mystery...the Air Force hiding something from the father...the kids making a movie...the boy dealing with his mother's death -- but none of them really mesh.
Compare that to two of the movies SUPER 8 is going to be compared to:
CLOVERFIELD -- after a girl run out from a party, a guy finally admits that he loves her and goes to get her back, but a giant monster attacks New York City and now he has to run out to save her life. He will save her and they will be together, only to find out it is too late.
ET -- a boy who feels lonely and friendless finds and befriends an abandoned alien. The boy helps him get home, losing his new friend, but the adventure will bond him with other kids, thus gaining the friends he always wanted.
What you can see from both these movies is that they have a wonderful parallel -- the interior stories (man loves woman and wants to save a relationship, a lonely boy who wants a friend) and the exterior stories (man trying to save woman from monster, boy helping an alien get home).
This is what SUPER 8 lacks. I'm not really sure what the interior stories for these kids, and the main kid especially is supposed to be. It's kind of a love story, it's kind of him getting over his mother's death...these just isn't a strong central question for him. And similarly, I'm not sure what the big external question is either. Because Abrams tries to hide the monster for so long, it just doesn't seem important. Even when all the backstory is revealed, it just doesn't feel like it matters because we haven't been engaged with the monster at all. We don't know it. We don't like it. We don't fear it. It's just this weird thing in the background that suddenly everyone is acting like it is incredibly important.
Maybe this is Abram's downfall. The man is one of the best in the world at the use of mystery to engage the audience, but he it feels like he sacrifices story for mystery and it throws everything off. The big climatic third act feels more tacked on than a natural extention of the movie. And the lack of parallel between the inner emotions of the characters and their outer events surrounding them, make the ending feel less like a powerful moments, then just a rehash of a more (emotionally) successful Spielberg film.
Still, there are a lot of wonderful moments here. The kids themselves are fantastic and Abrams finds lots of small moments that are incribly satisfying. This is a movie where you definitely get your money's worth...but because the parts seem greater than the whole, you also might feel like the movie was disappointing compared to what it could have been.
Still, for all the good stuff in it I'm still going to give it a...
*** RECOMMEND ***
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