Super 8 ain't that great

Rating: 4/10 (13 May 2014)

Super 8 focuses on the lives of a small group of friends whose main interest is in creating movies. One evening whilst filming their latest movie, they witness a train crash. Following the aftermath, they are warned not to inform anyone else that they know about the incident otherwise they will be killed as well as their parents. Shortly after, mysterious and unexplained events begin to occur in the town.
I didn't mind so much that Super 8 felt like it had various elements of films we've seen before. Yes there wasn't much originality, but that wasn't really what bothered me. My biggest bug bear with this film was the majority of the child actors - particularly the kid who was the film director and the 'dynamite' guy. These 2 kids were just annoying as hell. The rest of the kids were also annoying with the possible exception of Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) and Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) who were actually fairly likable. All the kids were either shouting at each other or talking over each other. At times, it felt like I was watching an over acting contest. I was pleased when brief moments arrived when the kids weren't on screen just so that my ears were given a break.
Writer & Director Abrams does manage to inject some emotion into the film which at least gave the film and its characters a little bit of depth. Alice and Joe start to develop feelings for each other but Joe's dad and Alice's Dad don't want their children to see each other. This is because Joe's dad blames Alice's dad for his wife's death - this is due to the fact that Joe's wife and Alice's dad both worked together and Joe's wife ends up being killed in an accident whilst covering a shift which Alice's father should have been covering. This animosity between the 2 men clearly causes problems for Alice and Joe and their blossoming relationship, but the 2 men do put their differences to one side when they both work together to find their children. This was a nice aspect to an otherwise poor film.
Aside from the annoying characters, Super 8 never really held my interest. It's about 2/3 of the way into the film before you release why everything that has proceeded is occurring, by which time I had completely lost interest. The film was light on scares, light on character development. The only real hook with this is the mystery of what is happening in the town, but I felt that the mystery was drawn out far too long to really sustain interest.
There's very little going for this film and if I'm honest the old good aspects of this film were the train crash and the vague attempt that was made at developing some characters. It's let down by a lot of annoying characters and a lack of scares and a somewhat lethargic pace.