'Super 8' - Movie Review

Every generation of movie goers has very distinctive memories of what it meant to go to a kid's movie when they were young. For those who grew up in the early 1980s those memories consist of young heroes on grand adventures in films such as "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "The Explorers," and "The Goonies." Those films all have a very distinct feel to them, and it's one that director J.J. Abrams has done his best to replicate with his latest film "Super 8." With Steven Spielberg on hand to produce the project, the end result feels joyfully authentic in how dated it is. It feels not of this time, but that's half the fun.

"Super 8" follows a ground of young friends in the early 1980sas they try to complete filming of their own short zombie movie for entry in a film festival. The film focuses the most on young Joe Lamb, played by Joel Courtney. Joe's mother passed away six months previous and his father, portrayed by Kyle Chandler, is a dedicated sheriff's deputy who doesn't really know how to relate to his son. Joe is doing make-up for the zombie movie directed by his friend Charles, played by Riley Griffiths. However his attention is more on Alice, portrayed by Elle Fanning, a classmate and one of the actors in the short film. One night Joe, Alice, Charles and several of their other friends set up to shoot a scene at a local train station. While they film a truck deliberately drives onto the tracks and derails an oncoming train carrying air force cargo. However the train was also carrying something else as well, a creature that is unlike anything the friends have ever seen. Now the creature is loose in their town and the military is becoming ever more aggressive about tracking it down.

"Super 8" is deliberately retro, yet it manages this in a very sincere and authentic fashion. It's not put together as a pastiche or parody of 1980s movies; it's made to actually feel like it came from that era. It gets the feel perfectly, from the old school methods of obscuring the creature right down to lens flairs on the camera which don't happen in modern movies. The young actors all carry the movie very well; they're energetic and entertaining from the beginning. The relationships feel very genuine between the kids and the adult actors are given decent material to work with as well. The film is scary at parts but true to this type of movie it's a sense of general danger more than horrific images or even jump scares. So it's scary in a fairly family friendly way.

Abrams and his collaborators also side-step many of the pit falls of classic films from this era, such as clueless adults. All of the adults are being as proactive as they can be, and the reasons the kids figure things out that the adults don't feel much more legitimate than often happens in these movies. Having Spielberg, the master of these kinds of films, helping out behind the scenes clearly helped as his general aesthetic is all over this film. However it never feels like a knock-off, more of a loving tribute or even some lost film made at that time that was never shown until now.

There are a couple issues with "Super 8"overall. One is the creature itself. For the bulk of the picture it is glimpsed very quickly in the background, usually obscured or out of focus. And for these sections it works quite well. However at the climax when it's fully revealed something feels off, and it's the fact that the monster is entire CGI. For a film as aggressively nostalgic as this one it's somewhat head scratching that the creature wasn't created as a practical effect to keep with the feel of the period and films Abrams was emulating. The creature would have still had to be CGI for many of the full body or long distance shots because a puppet couldn't do the things it's called upon to do. But when it goes in close on the face a practical animatronic puppet would have been much more in keeping with the feel of the film. Speaking of the nostalgia of the film it may quite simply not hold much appeal to those too young to have childhood memories of the 1980s sci-fi adventures. In that sense it's made for a fairly specific audience, and will play well to that audience. But younger viewers may simply find it needlessly old fashioned.

Anybody who grew up in the 1980s or otherwise has particularly fond memories of the family adventure films of that era will find plenty to like about "Super 8." Ultimately it feels quite a bit like a niche homage film, and while it's undeniably well made it's geared towards a pretty specific audience. Those outside of the target demographic may still enjoy it but it's clearly been designed to be as much about nostalgia as telling the story in and of itself. Even without the nostalgia effect it's still fun, but that nostalgia is required for full enjoyment.

Final Score: 4 out of 5