Review: Super 8

       It's well known that even as a kid Stephen Spielberg made movies. He directed humble home-movies shot on his parent's video camera and casting his friends and family for the acting roles. Spielberg would then go on to become one of Hollywood's most revered directors, making many classic films like Jaws, ET, and Saving Private Ryan. In the 1980s Spielberg made many films that focused on an group of kids going on some kind of fantastic adventure, the most famous being ET and The Goonies. Director JJ Abrams worked as a crew member on some of these early Spielberg movies before eventually becoming the director of Mission Impossible III and Star Trek. Now the two of them have teamed up to make a movie that is an homage to Spielberg's iconic kids movies that is updated with modern special effects.

       Super 8 takes place in a small town in Ohio, in which a group of kids are busy making a zombie movie for a local film festival. Our hero is Joe Lamb, a 12 year old who makes model trains and is a capable make-up effects artist. The group starts filming at an abandoned train stop, and unexpectedly a train approaches. Hurrying to set up the shot before the train passes so that they can maximize production value, tragedy strikes. A pickup truck drives on to the tracks and crashes head-on into the train causing the train to derail. This scene is fantastic, the explosions and chaos continue much longer than you would expect, but it is really edge of your seat stuff. Soon afterwards, a string of missing people, dogs, and merchandise coupled with the arrival of the Air Force, we know there is something more going on than just a simple train derailment. Several scenes suggest that there is an alien monster going around causing all of these problems and the kids are on the case.

       The film succeeds at capturing the innocence and adventure of movies like The Goonies. The kids have a certain camaraderie that is believable as a group of childhood friends. Elle Fanning is fantastic as Joe's love interest, and they have several scenes which are very touching. The special effects are impressive, but Abrams goes back to his old habit of over using the lens flare effect. Abrams was criticized a lot for doing this in 2009's Star Trek, but here it's even more distracting. There was one scene that took place at night and was in almost total darkness, but there was a large lens flare going across the middle of the screen that apparently had no source. The script is nothing special, but neither is it terrible, it's a passable, somewhat predictable story with believable characters in a out of this world situation. If you're feeling nostalgic but want to see something fresh, Super 8 is just what you need.