Super 8

Already a few critics have jumped on this film, calling it ‘nostalgia porn’. It’s a worthless kind of complaint but it’s kind of easy to understand. It’s the first collaboration between two giants of pop culture: JJ Abrams, who writes and directs, and Steven Spielberg, who here produces. The hype around Super 8 suggests a ‘70s style Spielberg pic with all that that implies – kids, chases, ‘broken homes’, a suburban small town setting, much paranoia and a storyline that swoops and dives across plot lines concerned with military cover ups, teen adventure and What It Takes to Be a Good Father. And yep, every single one of those stylistic tics and story quirks are present and accounted for here. Which is another way of saying this is a big, loud and busy movie. In a way, and I mean this as a compliment, this is one long movie in-joke. Just about every scene is a conscious and loving ‘steal’ from another movie, usually something directed by Spielberg – quotes from E.T. and especially Close Encounters abound, but there’s also riffs on Jaws, Duel, The Sugarland Express and even 1941! If you know these movies, Super 8 plays like a party; it’s like pals and their secret jokes. The plot itself is a parody of Blow Out and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them! and War of the Worlds via Stand By Me.

What I suspect has given Super 8 an aura of movie ‘cool’ leading up to its release is Abrams. He’s got the best kind of new age sci-fi credentials in Lost and the Star Trek re-boot of 2009. (You could throw in Cloverfield too, the ‘found footage’ chase-‘n’-hide monster from outer space movie he produced in 2008.) He’s a generation younger than Spielberg (the latter is now pushing 70) and his sensibility is different too. His stuff is emotional, but in a different way to Spielberg. He’s got a better feel for comedy than Spielberg and his relationship with the material is more ironic, which makes it less sentimental, and while there’s gee-wiz stuff, scares and action all over Super 8, it’s the comedy that keeps it alive and warm; it saves it from just another exercise in studio summer blockbuster mechanics. What Spielberg and Abrams seem to have in common is not just a love of the movies, but something else that is deeper about the movie making process itself. Anyone who knows anything about Spielberg understands that as a kid he was bullied and harassed. Making super 8 movies, literally calling the shots and ‘pushing’ around the ‘cool’ guys, was Spielberg’s way of getting control of his life. It was a way of making the world his. Abrams got started making super 8 movies too. Obviously there’s a kinship.

The best thing about Super 8 isn’t just its sheer joy and pleasure in special effects, suspense, and the exotic possibilities of sci-fi; it’s the way it connects so directly and deeply with all the nerds out there who tried to make sense of who they were by creating something. Distilled to essentials, Super 8 is about how making movies can be a great way to exorcise your demons and get control. It’s a fashionable theme; the need to ‘recover’ from some terrible angst is everywhere in American popular culture and movies, but this is the first ‘therapy’ movie I’ve seen about kids making a super 8 zombie movie!

The setting is a steel town in Ohio. The time is 1979 and 13-year-old Joe (Joel Courtney) is grieving over his mother, who was killed in an accident at the mill. His dad (Kyle Chandler) is the town cop, who’s struggling with the responsibility of fathering. His best buddy is Charles (Riley Griffiths), the teen auteur of what looks like a super 8 remake of Night of the Living Dead. Charles is probably the funniest of the movie’s several comic creations; he’s a self-obsessed user of a director, who spends most of the movie manipulating friends and foes to get his movie done. When pretty Alice (Elle Fanning), daughter of the town ‘troublemaker’, takes the female lead in the zombie movie, it’s the set up for romantic rivalry and an opportunity for Joe to learn a thing or two about first love.

While Joe and Charles and crew shoot a climatic scene at a deserted railway station ‘real-life’ crashes in; there’s a train wreck, something terrible escapes from the wreckage and their super 8 camera records the whole thing. Enter the army and a backstory about secret and sinister experiments. Will Joe step up for himself and his friends? Will he end up with Alice the girl from the wrong side of the tracks? Can Abrams keep up the relentless pace? You can guess the answers.

What follows has a predictable energy to it, but in a way that’s really enjoyable since Abrams understands the conventions so well; he’s terrific at putting something really unique or smart into every single ‘seen before’ moment.

Super 8 is kind of impossible to review in close detail since a lot of the fun is in the plot and to talk about that here is entering spoiler territory.

The performances are all fine, the scares are good, and it looks and sounds like a cross between E.T. and Lost. Still, what’s best about it is the way it taps the power of movies and stories. For Joe, filmmaking isn’t just about making fantasy, it’s a liberation.