FILM REVIEW // Super 8 (2011)

JJ Abram’s 2011 film Super 8 - both a homage to and collaboration with Steven Spielberg - may be corny and cliché, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Spielberg produced the movie, which not only contains the most famous iconography from Close Encounters and ET (friends riding bikes, technology behaving strangely, big spaceships, etc.) but also - like many of Spielberg’s films - contrasts the world of children, adults, and in this case, extra-terrestrials. The story follows a group of young teenagers in 1979 filming a homemade zombie film, who witness the event which leaves an otherworldly, monstrous being loose in their home town.

Perhaps the highlight of the film is early-on: the ‘inciting incident’ of the story, which comes in the form of a train-crash-turned-action-scene. It may be unrealistic as hell - explosions all round, heavy train wagons sailing into orbit and one making the noise of a truck (??) - but it’s absolutely SENSATIONAL. The sound effects and sweeping camera shots come together perfectly to make a whole other level of satisfying destruction (I see why JJ was previously hired for Mission Impossible…). The sinister antagonists are the US Air Force, and it was good to see Noah Emmerich (from The Truman Show) again, in the role of the bad guy.

The film is about a tortured, lost and embittered alien, but the emotional centre is a human story. Like many movies before it, Super 8 uses extraordinary events which help the main characters (Joe and Alice) improve their troubled family relationships. This worked well for me - several scenes are really touching, and Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney and Kyle Chandler all play their roles really well! There are a couple of the moments where the film screams ‘symbolism’ and overdoes it; overall I found myself wishing JJ’s writing was more original. But although it follows a tried formula, Super 8 contains the essential ingredients for an entertaining and emotionally engaging movie experience.