Super 8

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2012)

From producer Steven Spielberg, and writer/director and creator of Lost, J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossibe III), I saw the trailer for this film in the cinema, it got a lot of hype, but I wasn't sure whether I would want to see it or not, but I did watch eventually. Basically, set in summer 1979, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths), Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), Preston (Zach Mills), Martin (Gabriel Basso) and Cary (Ryan Lee) are six young friends making a zombie movie with a camera that uses Super 8 mm film. Alice is the daughter Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), who Joe's father Deputy Jack Lamb (Kyle Chandler) blames for the death of his wife who died in a factory accident, as he did not do his shift in the same factory and she took over. The youngsters are making this movie which Charles hopes to enter into a local film festival, and bringing in Alice as a leading character they continue filming at a train depot, and they are surprised by her talent. They film the scene they planned with a train passes, but Joe sees a pickup truck driving on the track, and it crashes causing a huge derailment and pileup, and all the kids are lucky to be alive. In the wreckage they find strange white cubes, and the truck that crashed has their biology teacher Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman) inside, he crashed on purpose, and at gunpoint he tells them not to talk about what happened to anyone. The next day the crash site is surrounded and being secured by the U.S. Airforce, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), who comes across one of the Super 8 film reels and realises someone filmed the accident, but weirder things happen with dogs, kitchen appliances, car engines, power lines and even people vanishing. While Jack is arrested trying to get inside information into what is really going on, and the Air Force start preparations to evacuate the town, Joe and Charles look at the footage back, and not only plan to continue filming, but in the footage they spot an alien monster creature crawling from the wreckage. It is found out that Alice is missing as well, so Joe, Charles, Cary, and Martin start their own mission to find and get her back, and ultimately find out what is going on in the town. They find out, from looking in the secret files in Woodward's stash that there are aliens, and they have only come to Earth to rebuild their ship and go home again, and the white cubes shape shift to help them, and Woodward had a telepathic connection with the escaped alien, he crashed the truck into the train to release it. Jack manages to escape his captivity, but he is forced to take Dainard with him when he finds out that the youngsters have gone back into the cordoned off town looking for Alice, and while travelling together Jack and Dainard resolve their differences. When Colonel Nelec catches the children, the alien shows up attacking and the military are firing, creating a big war zone situation, with the children caught in the battle. While an injured Martin and Charles looking after him stay behind, Joe and Cary go to look for Alice, and they find the alien's lair near the cemetery Joe's mother was buried, and it is there they find her, many other missing people, and all the missing appliances and stuff, all put in supposedly for food. The alien is about to do something to Joe, but he speaks to it and it understands his words telling him to let go of its bad feelings, and it lets the children and everyone else all go. Moments later the people are all reunited with their loves ones, and all the white cubes soar into the sky, drawn by huge magnetic force, to build up an alien spaceship which the creature enters, and it takes off after Joe lets go of his locket containing a photo of his mother. In the closing credits we see the completed zombie movie that the children made with the Super 8 film. Also starring Kyle Chandler as Jackson Lamb, Jessica Tuck as Mrs. Kaznyk and The Simpsons' Dan Castellaneta as Izzy. All the young actors do fantastic in the situations they are put in, especially standing out are Courtney and Fanning who of course have a sweet relationship in the story as well, I can agree with the critics that the special effects moments are fantastic to watch, but at the same time the regular scenes with the children and other characters interacting is fantastic as well, but overall it adds up to a great science fiction adventure. Very good!