Fresh Reviews: "Super 8"

Rated PG-13 for violence, strong language, and drug use (marijuana) by one adult character.

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How often does it happen that a producer/director combination is enough to make a movie with a largely unknown cast of kids barely in their teens one of the most anticipated movies of the summer? Well, if the producer is Steven Spielberg and the writer/director is J. J. Abrams, that's enough. The combination of Spielberg's wide-eyed wonder and sweet nostalgia with Abram's sinister suspense makes for a blend unlike any of the other blockbusters out there right now.

Back in 1979, a group of childhood friends is making their own five-minute movie about zombies, which they hope to enter in a Super-8 film contest. Filming after midnight at the local train station, they decide to shoot the oncoming train and are shocked to see a car containing one of their teachers drive right up on the tracks and park there, causing a collision. In the resulting chaos, something... nobody is quite sure what, other than that it's not human... escapes from the train, and mysterious things begin happening around town. The kids, of course, have to figure out what's going on, and presumably save the town in the process... and maybe the world.

Yes, this film does have a certain amount of the Spielberg touch, but for those who might tend to steer clear of the Spielberg sentimentality, just remember that this is first and foremost a J.J. Abrams movie, and the man who gave us "Cloverfield" and the latest "Star Trek" has rarely been one for too much of that sort of thing. This is a genuinely scary movie, one that doesn't hold back on the scares just because it stars a group of kids, and which sometimes pushes the limits of its PG-13 rating. And while it features kids from fractured families, just like "E.T.", these kids are really traumatized by the familial dysfunction... it isn't just a nostalgic kind of wistfulness. In fact, for a period piece (1979) it's remarkable how little real nostalgia there is. The most significant way of looking at this movie, for me, is that it's exactly the kind of movie I wanted to watch when I was the age of its leading characters, and watching it now is exactly like traveling back to age 13 and living out its adventure myself.

As for the adventure: Abrams, in "Cloverfield", wisely used the approach of not showing the menacing creature except in very brief flashes until the very end of the film, and follows that again here (come to think of it, so did Spielberg in "Jaws", even though we knew it was a shark). All the more suspense as a result. The film has what I'm convinced are the best special effects of the year, and for once they serve the story rather than BEING the story. And while there's plenty of things blowing up and all that, I was most intrigued by a plotline that ties in the alien and the earthlings' response to him to the treatment of prisoners in Abu Graib and Guantanamo (I wish I could be more specific than that, but it would reveal too much). Can't imagine Spielberg on his own throwing that in.

But ultimately, however well made technically, and however well directed and written, it's the characters that sell a movie, and "Super 8" is populated by the best cast of young actors I've seen in ages. Joel Courtney as our main protagonist, the make-up artist on the zombie film, Riley Griffiths as the obsessed writer/director, Zach Mills as the zombie film's leading man, and the hilarious Ryan Lee as the explosives-crazy special effects guy all seem not like a group of young actors, but rather like actual long-time friends whose lives you happen to be observing. There is not a trace of obvious "acting" taking place here. And Elle Fanning as the zombie movie's leading lady gives a better performance than many more experienced actresses twice her age. I thought (and still think) that her sister Dakota is quite an accomplished young star, but at several years younger, Elle is even better.

"Super 8" isn't a perfect movie, of course... there's never been any such thing. But it gets so many things right, and is filled with such an incredible sense of fun and excitement that I'm more than willing to ignore any minor glitches. Hollywood has so much trouble lately in getting the things right that it always used to be able to do effortlessly, that when a movie comes along that shows how they CAN still make them like they used to, it's an occasion to celebrate. And as far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what "Super 8" is.