Review - 'Super 8'

-Attention: The following review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk, or whatever-

Super 8

Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 112 mins
Director: J.J. Abrams
Written by: J.J. Abrams
Synopsis(taken from imdb.com): After witnessing a mysterious train crash, a group of friends in the summer of 1979 begin noticing strange happenings going around in their small town, and begin to investigate into the creepy phenomenon.


STORY:


Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers! This review in particular is bound to be ripe with them. So if you don't want to spoil the fun before you've had a chance to drizzle it on your face, then you might want to just skip the text and move down to the final grade. Go ahead. Do it. I'll wait.

….

So? Satisfied? You may have found that less fulfilling than reading the full review, with all of its juicy adjectives and plump metaphors. And so after spoiling the final judgment of this spoiler-ridden spoil-fest, I trust you're ready to proceed. Shall we? Okay then.


J.J. Abrams, the man who brought us the brilliance of LOST and the mediocrity of Cloverfield, is back again with this delightful late 70's romp. Super 8 follows Joe (Joel Courtney) and his band of misfit friends, as they attempt to make an amateur film about zombies. Instead of zombies, we get an alien story, however (whoah, massive spoiler already! Bring on the heat!). Joe's friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) is the aspiring movie director, and Joe helps out with "makeup and special effects", whatever that means. Despite being friends, Joe and Charles end up in a bit of a quarrel over a girl they both like, Alice (Elle Fanning). And then an alien drops in and steals everyone's refrigerators. Yeah. It's like that.

While filming a scene at the local train station, the kids experience a harrowing event. A truck drives onto the tracks and directly into the path of an oncoming train, causing a wreck as catastrophic as two bears with shoulder-mounted rockets colliding into each other. The driver of the truck, a science teacher, barely survives, his skeleton apparently held together with industrial-strength cement. He warns the children never to speak of what they've seen, and waves a gun at them with the steady hand of a Parkinson's disease sufferer. Joe and Co. flee the scene just as the military swoops in, led by their new instantaneous trainwreck-detecting technology.

All this excitement lays juxtaposed upon the somber reality Joe faces at home. He and his father are still learning to cope with the loss of Joe's mother, who died in a freak accident at work. Also struggling to deal with the situation is Alice's father, who's absence at work that day was what placed Joe's mother in harm's way to begin with (another spoiler! Is there no end to the brutality?). There are other complexities to the story which this subplot introduces, but I'll not get into them. Let's just say it's all rather convincing and does a good job of character development.

After the train crash, military personnel begin swarming the small town, engaged in secretive surveillance. Not long after, people's pets, appliances, electronics, and other possessions begin mysteriously vanishing faster than a politician's campaign funds. One scene in particular at a gas station at night involving both the sheriff and the gas station's attendant is rather memorable. After Alice herself gets taken by the alien-beast-thing, Joe gains a very personal interest in discovering what's going on.

The military devises a ruse to force the townspeople out of town so that they may contain the situation better, or perhaps they just enjoy playing with flamethrowers. In the face of evacuation, Joe and his friends do their best to put the pieces together. Enlisting the help of a local Shaggy-esque character, they infiltrate a nearby base and uncover a myriad of materials which conveniently explain exactly what's going on. Joe and his friend Cary (Ryan Lee) stumble upon the alien's underground lair, and are able to free Alice, the sheriff, and some crazy cat lady in curlers.

And now we come to it. The major complaint I have with Super 8. As all the important characters reunite, the alien assembles all the junk he's gathered into a spaceship, and ascends into the heavens as the music swells. With all of the building the story had done up to this point, I expected a bit more explosive ending. What we end up with is instead more of a fizzle than a bang. With all of the trouble the unnamed visitor had caused up to this point, he leaves in a rather passive fashion. It's not terrible as far as endings go, just seemed a bit anti-climactic.

All in all, the characters are interesting, and the story, despite its attempts to cover itself in the hollowed-out flesh of E.T., contains a pacing that makes it unique. Not to mention that it's a tale with actual substance and heart, which is more than most of what we get out of Hollywood these days.

STORY RATING GRADE: A-
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ACTING:

What's likely to stand out right away is the rather good job that the film's rather young central cast does, despite their youth. The sequences with all the kids together are directed well, as they all chatter and talk over each other in typical kid fashion. J.J. Abrams is known for finding just the right person to fit their correlating character in his mind, and it seems he succeeds again here. Upon careful rumination of the actors' performances, I have true difficulty in generating any complaints. Even though I'm not a big Kyle Chandler fan, I felt that he was a decent fit for the role of Joe's father. Joel Courtney and Ryan Lee are likely both names to watch in years to come, and Elle Fanning proved she's every bit as good as her older sister, seamlessly transitioning from sweet and innocent girl-next-door to embittered rebel.

Summary: Acting is good in this film. That work for you, Captain Inquisitive?

ACTING RATING GRADE: A-
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SOUND:

I loved Michael Giacchino's work on LOST. I'm just going to end that sentence right there. That being said, I wasn't feeling the love so much on Super 8. The score is very subtle in this film, playing a more supportive role than a showy one. Not that this is bad, but it kind of ends up getting swallowed up by the film's sound effects.

The most memorable aspects of this film's sound are the enormous SKTHOOOOOM!s which accompany the action sequences. For whatever reason, perhaps out of sheer curiosity over whether making people's eardrums bleed is actually possible, whoever mixed the sound on this movie put considerable effort into making every explosion and crash contain as much "punch" as Mike Tyson's teeth. I appreciate the attempt to intensify the more violent aspects of the film so that they seem grander in scale, but I'm not entirely sure adding more decibels is the only way to achieve this. I prefer to view cinematic works of art which caress my ears, not have carnivorous earthworms devour my cochleas from the inside-out.

If you're already accustomed to having M80s lit and taped to the side of your head whilst viewing films, then Super 8 shouldn't be a problem for you.

SOUND RATING GRADE: B
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VISUALS:

If you've still got bell bottoms in your closet, then Super 8 is going to feel like a large, fuzzy blanket you can rub your cheek on before you get chased out of the store by the owner who claims it isn't "sanitary". Pssh. Like he would know.

The fashions and music aren't paraded around quite as fancifully as on That 70s Show, but they're still there to be observed, hippies and Fawcett-hair included. Amidst this backdrop we are treated to fantastic trainwrecks, bizarre cube-like things, and sneaky alien horror. The alien's presence is managed well, as we never get a good look at it until the last few minutes. Style-wise, the only thing which seems out of place in this time piece is the use of colored lens flares. Aside from giant alien spaceships, of course. Then again, for those who spent most of the 70s in a haze, extraterrestrial craft might not be out of the ordinary at all. They might have even experienced their own personal lens flares at times. (Insert additional pot joke here.)

In summary here, there's plenty about this film which will make you feel at home, a guest in the characters' lives as you get to watch the narrative unfold. Just make sure not to overstay your visit. After all, even the alien knew when it was time to skip town.

VISUALS RATING GRADE: A-
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Recap:

STORY: A-
ACTING: A-
SOUND: B
VISUALS: A-

OVERALL RATING: A-
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-Ratings Breakdown-

A - Worth paying money to go see in theatres as soon as possible. Not to be missed.
B – Go see it in the theater if you've got some cash to burn and want to be entertained for a couple hours.
C – Wait for this one to be available through your favorite movie rental service.
D – Catch it on tv if you've got nothing better to do. Maybe good for a laugh.
F – Avoid at all costs, you will want your time back.