Super 8

***Super 8*** is a 2011 American science-fiction horror film.

## Synopsis

During the summer of 1979, a group of friends witness a train crash and investigate subsequent unexplained events in their small town.

## Plot

In 1979, Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb of Lillian, Ohio, and his 14-year-old son Joe, mourn the death of his mother Elizabeth in a steel mill accident. Jack blames her co-worker, Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), as she was covering his shift while he recovered from a hangover, and all Joe has left is a locket that belonged to her, that he now holds on to.

Four months after Elizabeth's funeral, Joe's best friend Charles Kaznyk decides to make a low-budget zombie movie for an international film competition. Charles enlists the help of Preston Scott, Martin Read, and Cary McCarthy, as well as Dainard's daughter, Alice. Though their fathers would be furious, Joe and Alice become close to each other.

Charles has them film a scene at a train depot at midnight. During a rehearsal, a train approaches, and Charles has them start filming as the train passes to add 'production value'. While filming, Joe witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the tracks and ram the train, causing a massive derailment that spectacularly destroys the train, the depot and the surrounding area, and separates the children from each other amidst the chaos. Joe finds himself near one container, to which the loading door is violently thrown from the carriage by an unseen force. Eventually the kids regroup and wander the wreckage. The children investigate the wreck and find crates full of strange white cubes, then discover the truck's driver is Dr. Woodward, their biology teacher. Woodward, barely alive, warns them at gunpoint to forget what they saw that night, or else they and their parents will be killed. The children flee the scene just as a convoy from the local U.S. Air Force base, led by Col. Nelec, arrives at the scene. Nelec discovers an empty Super 8mm film box, and assumes the event was purposely captured on camera.

While Joe and Charles wait for their film to be developed, the town experiences strange events: All the dogs run away, several townspeople go missing, the electrical power fluctuates and electronic items from all over are stolen. Overhearing military communications, Jack approaches Nelec to address the rising panic in town, but Nelec instead orders him arrested. Nelec orders the use of flamethrowers to start wildfires outside of town, as an excuse to evacuate people to the base. Suddenly, soldiers sweep into town to begin the evacuation. Meanwhile, Joe and Charles watch the derailment footage and discover that a large creature escaped from the train.

At the base, Joe learns from Alice's father that she is missing, abducted by the creature following an argument between Alice and her father. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary convince Jen (AJ Michalka), Charles' older sister, to pretend to hit on Donny (a worker at the camera shop) in order to get into town to rescue Alice. They break into Dr. Woodward's storage trailer and discover films and documents from his time as a government researcher.

They play the film, which reveals that an alien crash-landed in 1958. The Air Force captured the alien and was running experiments on it while keeping it from its ship. Woodward was one of the scientists experimenting on the ship, composed of the white cubes. At one point, the alien grabbed Woodward, apparently establishing a psychic connection with him. Now understanding the alien, he was compelled to rescue it and help it escape from Earth. He found out about the train, years later, and sought the opportunity to help the creature. The boys are caught by Nelec, but as they are taken back to base to face an unknown fate, the alien attacks their bus, tipping it over. The boys escape as the alien focuses on killing the airmen, saving Nelec for last. Meanwhile, Jack escapes from the base's brig and makes his way to the shelter housing the townsfolk. He learns from Preston about Joe's plan to rescue Alice. Jack and Dainard then agree to put aside their differences to save their kids, making amends along the way.

In town, the military attempts to kill the alien but find their hardware goes haywire in its presence, resulting in significant collateral damage to the town. Martin is injured in an explosion, so Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Cary head to the cemetery, where Joe had earlier seen something there that made him suspicious. Inside the cemetery's garage, they find a massive tunnel leading to a warren of underground caverns. In a chamber beneath the town's water tower, they find the alien has created a device from the town's stolen electronics, that it appears to be trying to fully activate, attached to the base of the tower. The alien also has several people, including Alice, hanging from the ceiling and unconscious, that it uses for food. Using Cary's firecrackers as a distraction, Joe frees Alice and the others, but they end up trapped in a dead end cavern after the alien chases them down and dispatches the others. Alice and Cary scream and cower against the tunnel wall, but Joe steps forward and tries to talk to the alien. The alien grabs Joe, who quietly speaks to the alien, telling him over and over that "bad things happen" but that the alien "can still live". After studying Joe for a moment, and then hearing its device fully activating, the alien releases him and departs, allowing the three to return to the surface.

As Joe and Alice reunite with their fathers, everyone watches as numerous metal objects from all over town are pulled to the top of the water tower by an unknown force. The white cubes are also pulled in to assemble into the alien's spaceship, using the objects and the water tower as its base. As it nears completion, the alien enters the spaceship. The locket is then drawn from out of Joe's pocket towards the tower and Joe, after a brief moment, decides to let it go, completing the ship. The water tank implodes and as the tower legs fall a safe distance away into the street, the ship rockets into space. Joe takes Alice's hand as they watch the ship depart into the night sky.

During the credits, the kids' completed film, entitled *The Case,* is shown.