Wait a minute, is this movie directed by JJ Abrams or Steven Spielberg?

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2013)

Everything about this movie looks and feels like a Steven Spielberg movie rather than a JJ. Abrams. Unlike others movies that Spielberg produces, this one honestly feels like he directed it with most of the movie seem to be influences by a lot of Spielberg earlier works with scenes similar to Jurassic Park, Goonies, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, Jaws, E.T and War of the Worlds to name a few. It's called money and camera shot familiarity. Film directors patent movie grain, angles, and camera recording quality. So you instantly recognize Steven Spielberg DNA on film. Not only that, the movie has the same story clichés as Spielberg earlier works. Noticing these terms, Keeping the Family Together; The Search for the Lost Child; Science vs. Authority; Kids on Their Own. You find it in every early Spielberg film and in here. I wanted to see JJ Abrams spin into it, like 'Lost', but this film was so Spielbergism. Looking past that, the story starts off in 1979. Deputy Jack Lamb (Kyle Chandler) and his son Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) are just getting over the death of a love one. Joel Courtney reminds me of a very young Sean Astin from Goonies. Joe's friends decides to produce and make a low-budget zombie movie using a Super 8 camera to enter into an international film competition. Joe's friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) also enlists the help of 14-year-old Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) who is the daughter of the man that Joe's father has a beef with. So in a way, there is a bit of a Romeo and Juliet's house work here as Jack Lamb believes Alice's father had something to do with his wife's death. Elle Fanning who looks way older than her older sister Dakota was pretty good, playing the disturb daughter. Charles decides to film a scene at the local train depot using a passing train to add authenticity to his film. While shooting, Joe witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the tracks and ram the train head-on, causing a massive train derailment as the friends barely escape the resulting chaos and explosions. A alien is sent free and the government comes to find it led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), arrive to secure the area and the town. I'm kinda a huge fan of Noel Emmerich after seeing him in Thurman Show, but Colonel Nelec wasn't that impressing. Plus those Air Force uniform were ugly, it's remind me more of the Green Berets than the air force. Nelec discovers an empty box of Super 8 MM film, and assumes the event was captured on camera. Soon, people around town start to disappear, and Alice is one of the them. It's a race against time for the kids, as they try to save Alice from the alien. Most people thought of the movie as prequel of Cloverfield. JJ Abrams said no, but the alien did look like the one in that film. Let me state this out, if you honestly thinking this is going to be 'alien/monster' movie then you will be disappointed. You don't see the monster until near the end of the movie. This was very well written. It's not about the alien, but deals more with coping of a lose of somebody, the tense moments of father/child, and childhood innocents. It's mostly about Joe Lamb dealing with the death of his mother, while falling in love with the daughter of the man who cause his mother's death. I like the movie, all the kid's actors were great in it. The kid that's play Cary in the film, looks and reminds me of that kid from the Bad News Bears. It's really good how they tie in all this, with the sci-fiction. Some scenes were really slow, and the pacing should have really pick up. The ending to the movie was flat in my opinion. Other than that, it was good. Check out, during the credits, the completed Super 8 zombie film, titled The Case, by Charles and his friends is shown. The Case is just awfully funny on how badly it's made. Abrams' original plan was to film all of the sequences for the film-within-a-film, "The Case", using Super-8 cameras. However, this approach proved unsuccessful, as visual effects house ILM found it impossible to integrate CGI into the footage due to the format's graininess. For sequences involving CGI, cinematographer used Super 16 instead. In a way, the title should have been known as Super 8 & 16. Just don't think it's a alien movie, but more a coming to age movie