Sort of ET meets Close Encounters meets ALIEN

Rating: 7/10 (20 June 2011)

Even though this film was written and directed by J.J. Abrahms, the film oozes with Spielberg-ness. The film centers around a group of kids who have much more insight and wisdom than the adults, much like ET. The military branch of the US Government moves in, trying to hide whats really happening, much like Close Encounter of the Third Kind. And there's a large hulking space creature that I guess is not quite as malicious as the creature from Alien but he's tearing up a small town. As you'll see, some of the creature's victims are treated similarly to Alien.
The film involves a group of kids of junior high school age in 1979 shooting their own zombie-horror flick; one of whom has just lost his mother. The director Charles (played very convincingly by the young and talented Riley Griffiths), a sort of 12-year-old throwback to Orson Welles, replete with pipe, is the obsessed and ambition filmmaker doing everything he can to make a great film. He is constantly speaking of "production value". My guess is his character may have been somewhat based on the young Steven Spielberg who pressed his friends into little film projects shot with his super-8 camera back in the 1950's. The two other characters which emerge as the main focus are Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) two people thrust together because of their involvement with the film project who become somewhat intimate in a way that only 12-year-old's can. A supporting character of note has to be Cary, played by Ryan Lee, who carries around fire crackers just to make the older folk cringe.
The group is shooting a scene at a train station with the boy main character and the only girl in the movie. Their production literally becomes derailed by a train wreck which obliterates everything in sight, not to mention the station, although the super-8 camera which continued to film was surprisingly untouched! Of course, this is not just a train derailment: the whole train looks like it was in the middle of the front lines in WWII. A man in a busted up pick-up, looking half-dead, who may have intentionally derailed the train, tells the kids to run for their lives. The kids escape in their car, which was also surprisingly untouched, before the military guys show up with flash-lights and guns.
The story then moves on several fronts: the mystery of the train wreck, Charles' obsession with completing his movie, and the relationship between Joe and Alice and their parents. Eventually, when more of the mystery is revealed, the film becomes largely about a kind of reconciliation between the two kids and their parents. At a certain point, the movie-making aspect takes a back seat to the relationships of the two kids and the two adults. It seemed like Charles, the director, at one point, seems more like a supporting character.
Although I definitely enjoyed this film, largely because of the believability of the kids which is first-rate by any standard, I was frustrated on a couple of points. I thought the movie was trying to do too many things given its parameters. To me, the relationship between the two main kid characters and their parents distracted away from the really interesting idea about the kids trying to make their movie. Also, I thought there would be a lot more about the footage which was gotten at the train wreck.
The one character who I felt was slightly under-developed was Charles, the kid director. His screen time was sacrificed in order to develop more about the adult relationships, which I found less interesting, some of which seemed just a touch cliché. I wanted to know more about Charles, why he was shooting his films and other information. Only late in the film do we learn more about him and why he was engaging in this project.
Two stories which are very similar to this film, Spielberg's ET and Stephen King's IT, focus almost exclusively on the kids, who they are, and what they are trying to accomplish. If a story begins about a group of kids, I think it is better for the story to stay on them rather getting off on tangents. Super-8 started out that way, but then took a bit of a side turn and focused more on a couple of the adult characters. I was sort of expecting the kids to be on the lead and in the forefront for most of the story, and I wanted them to be the ones who solve the mystery without intervention from dear-old dad. Still, a very enjoyable movie, and the acting is first-rate to take you all the way. One surprise is at the end during the credits, which was actually my favorite part of the film, but I won't give it away!