Super 8
Monday, June 13, 2011 
I was recently surprised to learn that J.J. Abrams didn’t write or direct Cloverfield. He was a producer, but his is the only name I’ve ever heard attached to it. That could be at least in part because the director Matt Reeves was relatively unknown at the time (although he is responsible for last year’s Let Me In), and the writer Drew Goddard had previously only written for television (having worked on such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Alias). This realization was particularly surprising given the many similarities between the trailer and marketing for Cloverfield and Abrams’ latest movie, Super 8, which he did write and direct. I was underwhelmed by Cloverfield, so I was prepared for the same with Super 8. Unfortunately, I was right to feel that way.
Many years ago, the military captured an alien who had come to earth. The alien wanted to leave earth and return home, and had planned on doing so with what basically amounted to the world’s coolest Lego set which, when the blocks were put together, would form a spaceship. However, the military didn’t want the alien to leave and left it locked up. Dr. Woodward was one of the scientists working with the alien didn’t agree with this strategy, though, and tried to help the alien escape. His plan was foiled and he was discharged from the military, but he and the alien maintained a kind of psychic connection.
After a couple of decades, the alien was to be transferred to another base. For some reason, the military decided to place the alien on the same train as the blocks that could be used to build its spaceship. They also chose a route that happened to pass through the small factory town of Lillian, Ohio, which just happens to be the town where Dr. Woodward had taken up residence as a fourth grade biology teacher after being expelled from the military. His connection with the alien allowed him to sense that it was being transferred, and he came up with a foolproof plot to help free the alien: he would drive his pick-up truck into the path of the oncoming train. This was some magical truck because not only did it avoid getting completely destroyed in the crash, but it also caused the train to derail in spectacular fashion, allowing the alien to break free. The military was able to maintain control of the spaceship blocks, though, so the alien was still stuck on earth for the time being.
Even though the crash happened in the middle of the night on the edge of town, several kids were there to see it. They happened to be making a zombie movie for a local film festival, but they had to shoot it at night because their parents didn’t exactly approve of it. They got the crash on film, and upon reviewing the footage saw the alien escape. What started as a desire to simply use the crash and ensuing military-led cleanup to add realism to their movie led to them learning more about the true nature of the interaction between the military and the beast and a plot to help see it escape the planet.
The alien and its plight is actually a relatively small part of the movie. The real focus is on the kids, their relationships with each other and the adults of the town, and their attempt to make their movie. Joe, is a whiz at building models and applying makeup, and is also largely left to fend for himself as his mother recently died in an accident at the factory and his policeman father doesn’t have time for both his job and his kid. Joe has a crush on Alice, who plays the hero’s wife in their zombie movie. Charles (a kid reminiscent of Chunk from The Goonies) is the writer and director and is a total control freak. Cary is a budding pyromaniac, so he is in charge of special effects in addition to playing the zombie. And Martin is an undeveloped character we don’t know much about except that he plays the hero of the zombie movie.
There are enough problems with this movie to derail a train. It is riddled with plot holes and things that just don’t make any sense. There are unresolved story lines, which hopefully doesn’t mean that we’ll be seeing a sequel. There are other story lines in which the resolution doesn’t fit with what we know about what has happened. There is a decent amount of action, but it really isn’t very compelling, leaving the audience feeling disconnected from the movie. And the film is thoroughly riddled with unnecessary lens flares that serve no point and detract with what’s actually happening on screen. It’s like a kid wrote this movie, except the zombie film that the kids are making is actually much better than Super 8 itself.
The kids are actually the only real bright spot for this movie. Even though some of them don’t appear to have any prior movie or television credits, their acting was superb and generally surpassed that of the adults. The movie within the movie helped underscore this, as they did a great job acting like amateurs for those scenes. There were significant problems with their characters, but that shouldn’t be laid at the feet of the actors playing them.
In order to truly enjoy Super 8, I suspect that you would have to completely switch off your brain while you’re watching, and then not think about it all that much after leaving the theater. I can’t do that, so I’m left with the memory of a very mediocre movie and even more disappointment than I felt after Cloverfield.