A group of kids stumble across a horrific train accident that leads to more madness in writer-director J.J. Abrams SUPER 8.Joe, a middle school age boy from a small Ohio town, has just got out of school for the summer, but is having a hard time moving on from the loss of his mother following a tragic incident at the town's factory four months prior.
Joe and his buddies, Cary, Preston, Charles and Martin, like to shoot zombie movies on Charles’s Super 8 camera, and have found the perfect spot for their latest scene, the train depot. Charles, the director, enlists Alice, a girl from their school, as the film’s only actress, giving the film a love story angle, and the boys a ride to the train depot.
While filming at the depot, a man in a pick-up truck purposely collides with the train, setting off a set of massive explosions, flying objects and releasing something dangerous from one of the boxcars. Joe and his friends decide they will keep their knowledge of the accident a secret, but it's not before long the secret becomes a menace to society.
As Charles elects to add a love story to his zombie picture, demanding that his film provide something more than a typical genre piece, so does Abrams with SUPER 8.
In the midst of a summer filled with special effects and action driven blockbusters, SUPER 8 delivers more than just standard thrills. The film is a nostalgic slice of entertainment, set in 1979, it’s a Speilbergesque picture with heart, imagination, laughs and a sense of wonder rarely scene in movies today. The Spielberg comparisons are expected, and well deserved, as Spielberg is the film’s producer, and Abrams invokes many of the legendary director’s attributes into the film: teenagers, a mysterious back story, a middle-class family and issues that the main characters are wrestling with that can be embraced and valued by a mass audience.
The key to the film are the children‘s characters, and the child actors that play them. There’s not only a strong sense of community between the kids, but they also have distinct personalities, and an authentic way about them. Joe, Cary, Preston, Charles, Martin and Alice don’t look like the models of the HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL series, or flash the intellect of a Hogwart pupil, but they look, talk, act, laugh and frustrate each other like everyday teens.
The cast of unknowns is led by Joel Courtney as Joe. Joe is a mild-mannered boy, shy at times, but not around his friends. Courtney provides a likable and sympathetic youngster, one who is earnest and often timid, but strong and courageous when the situation demands it. His counterparts are also up to their tasks. Elle Fanning as Alice proves to be equally talented as her elder sister, bringing an emotional intensity rarely found at such a young age, and Riley Griffiths as Charles adds a lot of humor with two of SUPER 8’s most memorable lines.
The kids may be the key to SUPER 8, but Abrams knack for balancing spectacle and special moments is equally impressive. Abrams, the creator of LOST, was largely criticized for the unexplained or disappointing answers to the mystical questions formulated in television’s most ambitious series. Some may say the same of SUPER 8, but those critics are missing the point. Abrams entertaining adventures are not crafted to provide conclusions or explanations to unearthly or magical events. Instead Abrams provides solutions to earthly matters, adventures and struggles that mankind constantly battles, matters of the heart and mind that are often overcome through one’s perseverance or a little help from their friends.
SUPER 8 packages an intimate story of loss and redemption around an exhibition of mayhem, creating a blockbuster of classic proportions.
Grade: A
