Movies Reviews

Super 8 - Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Jun 9, 2011, 14:35 GMT

In the summer of 1979, a group of friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while making a super 8 movie and soon suspect that it was not an accident. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth – something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined. ...more

Spielberg and Abrams fans are chomping at the bit to see this collaboration of giants, shot under a veil of secrecy in West Virginia last year.

Little was known about it and the participants were under a gag order. But the time has come to lift the veil and I think the fans will be extremely happy with the results.

Super 8 is very much a nostalgia trip for Spielberg and Abrams as they put at the centre of this space aliens adventure a group of kids banding together to make a movie.

Every major filmmaker can tell stories of their childhood enthusiasm for making movies out of string, cans and their dad’s Super 8 camera.

That’s pretty much the starting point here, as kids gather at the railroad station in the middle of the night to shoot their zombie movie.

Like good little filmmakers, they’re thrilled when a train comes along. They meticulously and quickly orchestrate themselves to include the speeding train as “production value” that is, as background action to the scene they’re shooting. Everything goes swimmingly, the train performs beyond expectations and so do the young actors.

But as fate would have it, one of them witnesses a truck driving towards the train on the tracks, crashing into it, resulting in a horrific wreck. The scene is amazing and sets the stage for body rocking rumbling action scenes that follow. Earplugs won’t help.

Something escapes from the wreck and cuts across the fields and the town, ultimately sucking away all the metal from car engines, kitchen gadgets and what have you and even the family dogs. Soon people are being sucked away too. The local citizens are terrified and that’s heightened when the grim faced military arrives.

They evacuate the town with bristling, scary efficiency. This is a Spielberg signature if there ever was one.

Against all this action are the stories of a boy and his recently widowed dad, and a girl and her drunken dad and how the youngsters develop a much needed bond of friendship.

Both fathers are isolated by pain and depression and the children feel it; making a movie seems a great way to connect with fellow movie makers and have a bit of fun. But naturally both dads are against it which means they have to work under …you guessed it … a veil of secrecy.

The child players in Super 8 are extraordinary and each is exceptionally well defined. Joel Courtney who stars as the focal boy is freaky good, a big spirit in a boy’s body.

Elle Fanning plays his new best friend and if you ever need a kid to cry on cue, she’s your gal. Ryan Lee, Zach Mills, Gabriel Basso and particularly Riley Griffiths are extraordinary, carrying this $45M dollar project with ease.

This is the latest in the familiar plotlines of monsters terrifying inhabitants of the town and wreaking havoc.

It turns out the monster has a heart – Frankenstein, King Kong, et al. Super 8 is fun for so many reasons, maybe most especially getting to live as a kid on a project once again. That and the explosions.