Super 8, a J.J. Abrams film

I thought this would be like Cloverfield - big build up to a mysterious disaster and series of events. Cloverfield was a tribute to horror films and revitalized the hand-held camera angle of filming things. While I loved Abrams's reboot of the Star Trek series and its intricacies, I think he could have done better with this project. It felt like a stunt to give summer viewers a trip. Pan's Labyrinth was a brilliant stroke because it was a war movie and a fantasy, could be viewed both ways. I am still deciding whether I will like this movie and its genre split of drama and sci-fi.

The film centers around the viewpoint of Joe Lamb, the town deputy's son, and his friend, Charles's desire to enter a film contest with a zombie themed entry. The time is 1979 and the camera of choice is a super 8, the training wheels that honed many of today's filmmakers. One night, while filming at a train station, a white pick-up truck drives deliberately on the tracks and derails the train. Cary, another of Charles' gang of moviemakers and the resident pyromaniac, is overjoyed by all the chaos and explosions. The rest of the group attempts to collect themselves after witnessing first hand such a disaster. They discover the truck in a bad state and find that the driver is the honors biology teacher at their middle school. He tells them to run, backing up his words with a handgun before he collapses from weakness onto the steering wheel. Within minutes, Air force personnel are combing the tracks, collecting and boxing up crates of curious white plastic cubes that were strewn from the wreckage.

Joe's dad grows suspicious as the Air force men remain tight lipped about their mission. People start disappearing, household pets are discovered in neighboring counties, power supplies fade in and out. The nexus to all the mystery of the movie, is that whatever escaped that train is now dissecting the town and its people, causing ordinary citizens to live in wordless terror, while evading the military's attempts to corral its rampage.

Throughout all this chaos, Charles rallies his ragtag group and channels the town's hysteria into the backdrop and scenery of his movie. Joe begins to fall for Alice, the newly recruited actress for the movie. Alice and Joe's fathers had a falling out and the two parties had never toed the line of silence. Charles's movie provided an opportunity to break the familiar boundaries and know one another. But after Alice herself disappears, it is up to Joe's dad to decipher why the Air Force isn't cooperating while Joe investigates why their teacher was on the tracks, hoping it will help to rescue his new-found friend.

The movie within the movie plays while the credits roll. It is almost a homage to Abrams' own roots as a filmmaker, watching the youth fumble around with angles and "special effects." With the visionary view of a child, the experience time brings, and an insane budget, courtesy of Spielberg, things like Super 8 can be made.

Abrams has made hits
Three hundred is baseball's good
Only fate that you miss...