Welcome to the no spoiler zone! Here’s what we can tell you about Super 8: The action in this movie begins with six Lillian, Ohio kids shooting an amateur zombie movie. As their super 8 film rolls they witness a terrifying real-life train derailment. Soon strange things start happening in town as the army tries their best to contain the situation.
Ratings
Richard: ****
Mark: ***1/2
Richard Crouse: Mark, J.J. Abrams directs Super 8 the way he produced the TV show, Lost. He draws out the suspense, doling out just enough detail, shocks and surprises to keep the story interesting and moving forward. He knows that the strength of the movie isn’t the special effects or the whatever-it-is that is causing all the trouble, but the relationship between the kids. Call it Stand By Me with a giant bug… or a monster… or something. I’m not saying what!
Mark Breslin: All true, but you can feel Steven Spielberg’s hand guiding the movie all the way along. The suburban flyover state setting, the gentle outsider child protagonists, the deceased parent, the bicycles, the alien who just wants to go home, all Spielberg motifs. And setting it in the early ’80s, when Spielberg had his big sci-fi hits, surely was no coincidence.
RC: Perhaps so, but despite the Spielbergian flourishes, this still very much feels like an Abrams creation to me. His fingerprints are all over the action sequences – particularly the out-of-control train wreck scene – and even the sweetness we’ve come to associate with Spielberg has been dialed back. It’s still there – very much so in the film’s last 10 minutes – but Abrams manages to set the tone as though he is paying homage to the saccharine tendencies of his mentor than actually aping him.
MB: That train wreck scene had me on the edge of my seat! But the rest of the picture did not exactly exude menace. It’s more of a character piece about the young teens, and I thought the kids were great, certainly more interesting than the adults (which may be one of the points of the movie). I liked the picture, and my only real quibble was that the kids’ filmmaking, which played such an important part in the beginning of the movie, is dropped midway through the flick. The scenes of those kids making movies were dripping with charm.
RC: I thought so, too. Those scenes had a sense of fun to them and established the personalities of all the main kid characters. I think I liked this one more than you. I thought Super 8 was super great.
MB: Well, the middle was a bit soft and I’m always skeptical about courageous 14-year-olds. Still, there’s a lot to like in this one.
