It's so jarringly difficult to believe now, but when I was a child growing up in the '90s, I didn't rely on iPhones, the Internet, or video games to keep myself entertained (well, unless you count Super NES, because you weren't a real man unless you've mastered "Castlevania"). Instead, I stoked my rampant and ADD-fueled imagination in other ways, whether it was drawing, reading comic books, or, on some occasions, making movies.
However, I say "making movies" very loosely, as the most I did with my father's early '90s clunky-as-shit video camera was film stupid skits with friends and making stop-motion movies with my old Legos and action figures. But even so, it was an incredibly empowering feeling for a young boy, thinking that you were making film history when in reality you're producing utter crap.
But back in the 1960s and '70s, kids of that age took amateur filmmaking much more seriously, using those classic Eastman-Kodak Super 8 millimeter film cameras to execute imaginative, detailed, and even thoughtful home movie-style short films. These youngsters would go the whole mile, too: lighting, make-up, sound effects, fake blood, anything to emulate the blockbusters they watched on Saturday afternoons.
One such wunderkind was current geek god J.J. Abrams, creator of the popular television shows "Lost" and "Alias", producer of movies such as 2008's shaky-cam-palooza Cloverfield, and director of 2009's terrific Star Trek reboot. A veritable Hollywood jack-of-all-trades, Abrams has gained a well-earned reputation for churning out engaging, well-written, and visually-striking works left and right, and for his latest feature, the retro homage of all things Spielbergian titled Super 8, it's no different.
It's the summer of 1979 in small town Ohio, and tween-age Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is still recovering from the tragic death of his mother in a steel mill accident months earlier. It doesn't help that his sheriff's deputy father Jack (Kyle Chandler) is somewhat emotionally unavailable, so Joe takes refuge in serving as the make-up artist in his friend Charles' (Riley Griffiths) Super 8 zombie movie.
The film, titled The Case, stars gawky Martin (Gabriel Basso), supporting actor Preston (Zach Mills), and explosive-obsessed Cary (Ryan Lee) serving as cameraman and practical effects guru, but what really catches Joe's attention is the addition of girl-next-door Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) as the wife of the main character. Even though Jack and Alice's drunkard father Louis (Ron Eldard) forbid their children from socializing with each other, they secretly do so anyway, and the motely film crew sneak out at night to film a scene from their movie.
They do so at the train depot, but in the middle of their shoot, they witness a lone truck on the tracks collide into an oncoming train, causing a massive crash. Discovering that the still-living truck driver is their biology teacher Thomas Woodward (Glynn Turman), the kids are warned to keep the incident to themselves lest they or their loved ones be killed.
While the kids try to forget what happened and carry on with their film, strange events begin to unfold in their town, from constant power outages and seeming acts of bizarre theft to dogs and even townspeople abruptly disappearing. As the U.S. Air Force-- represented by stoic Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich)-- descends on the town to clean up the mess, and as Jack attempts to find out what secretive game the military is playing, Joe and his friends try to discover what exactly that train was holding... and where it is now.
In this era where summers are filled to the brink with franchises and sequels, one yearns for those good ol' days when a "blockbuster" could be a standalone event brimming with heart, ingenuity, and an overall sense of innocence to contrast with the current standard of cynical, excessively violent, "ironic" timewasters that we usually forget moments after leaving the theater. Luckily, Abrams managed to hold onto those sweet memories here, and as such made Super 8 a welcome homage to the classic films of his mentor and movie legend Steven Spielberg (E.T. being the obvious first to come to mind).
Specifically, the real attraction here is the plucky group of youngsters embarking on an adventure they never expected (again, a nod to the aforementioned alien film, as well as the Spielberg-produced '80s classic The Goonies), and here Abrams proves that he's the one to call on when it comes to directing child actors. The cast of teens possess a marvelous and truly naturalistic camaraderie together, their scenes ranging from heartfelt and emotional to downright hilarious.
Elle Fanning delivers another knockout performance after last winter's Somewhere, and newcomers Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, and Ryan Lee steal every scene they inhabit (especially in regards to the pyromaniac latter). And what makes their performances that much more convincing is the fact that Abrams wrote their dialogue to sound like actual kids their age, rather than the precocious, excessively-wise-beyond-their-years pabulum heard in most kid-starrers (I'm looking at you, Robert Rodriguez).
In fact, you could excise most of the sci-fi trappings and still have a thouroughly engaging movie. That's not to say that the action isn't exciting. Indeed, the train scene that sets the main plot in motion is one of the most riveting and mind-bogglingly spectacular disaster scenes ever put on film. Intense, jaw-dropping, and lasting several minutes, the sequence easily clinches whatever awards the visual effects team are bound to win in the coming months.
"Intense" could probably be the best term to define most of this movie, too. Don't expect any E.T.-style gentleness from Super 8, and definitely don't expect the mysterious alien to eat Reese's Pieces or play dress-up with Drew Barrymore. This time around, the visitor from another planet is a nightstalking monster of the Jaws variety, rarely seen but hella scary when it is. Unfortunately, the alien's origins and reasons for being in the military's clutches are very by-the-numbers, and seems more like a glorified MacGuffin instead of a central character. The film also begins to lose focus by the third act, becoming dangerously close to relying on horror-movie scares and getting too preoccupied with military cloak-and-dagger hoopla.
Nonetheless, the film is easily held aloft by the fabulous performances by the cast (the kids in particular), a warm and nostalgic screenplay, fantastic action, and a Williams-esque score by Michael Giacchino. Getting nowhere close to the timeless levels of E.T. that it clearly desires, Super 8 still manages to deliver the sweet taste of Hollywood past that most flicks of today could only dream of attaining.
Letter Grade: "B+"
