J.J. Abrams wrote and directed Super 8, and he built it around a train crash. The film opens in 1979 in Lillian, Ohio, where Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb and his 14-year-old son Joe are mourning the death of wife and mother Elizabeth in a workplace accident. Four months later, Joe’s friend Charles is shooting a zombie movie for a Super 8 competition, and the crew — Joe, Preston, Martin, Cary, and Alice Dainard — heads to a train depot at night to film a scene. A pickup truck rams an approaching train head-on. The depot is destroyed. Their camera captures all of it.
Trailer, via IMAX.
A Train Depot in Lillian, Ohio
That sequence is the best thing in Super 8, and it is not close. Abrams stages the derailment with real weight: the truck comes out of nowhere, the train folds in on itself, and the kids scatter. When they regroup, they find crates of strange white cubes in the wreckage. Then they find the truck driver. He is their biology teacher, Dr. Woodward, gravely injured and holding them at gunpoint, warning them to forget what they saw.
A convoy from the local Air Force base arrives, led by Col. Nelec. Nelec finds an empty Super 8 film box. That small detail — the box, not the camera, not the kids — is the hinge the whole movie turns on, and Abrams knows it. He lets the audience see Nelec see it.
Super 8 is a creature feature wearing a coming-of-age movie as a coat. The kids are making a zombie film. The town is being emptied by something else.
Dogs Run Away, Power Flickers
The strange events start small and get worse. Dogs run away. Townspeople go missing. Electrical power fluctuates. Electronic devices are stolen. Jack confronts Nelec about all of it, and Nelec has him arrested.
At a military hospital, Nelec questions Woodward. Woodward rebukes him. Nelec has Woodward killed with a lethal injection. That is the moment Super 8 stops being a kids’ adventure and becomes something colder. A man in a military uniform orders the death of a teacher in a hospital bed, and the film does not blink.
Louis and Alice get into a fight. She tries to flee on her bike. Louis chases her in his car and crashes. While Alice is fleeing, a large creature abducts her.
The creature is played by Bruce Greenwood, credited as Cooper. In the source material, the Alien is described as having escaped military captivity and gone on a rampage while trying to get back to his home planet. Woodward, it turns out, is a former Area 51 doctor who originally had a connection with the Alien.
Who Carries the Movie
The ensemble is stacked for a movie about kids on bikes. Kyle Chandler plays Deputy Jack Lamb. Elle Fanning plays Alice Dainard. Joel Courtney plays Joe. Gabriel Basso plays Martin Read. Noah Emmerich plays Col. Nelec. Ron Eldard plays Louis Dainard. Riley Griffiths plays Charles Kaznyk. Ryan Lee plays Cary McCarthy. Zach Mills plays Preston.
- Joe Lamb: the grieving 14-year-old at the center, holding his mother’s locket
- Alice Dainard: the girl whose father Jack blames for Elizabeth’s death
- Charles Kaznyk: the kid with the camera and the zombie movie
- Cary McCarthy, Martin Read, Preston: the rest of the crew
- Deputy Jack Lamb: the widower father who ends up arrested by Nelec’s men
- Col. Nelec: the Air Force officer who kills to keep the secret
The film’s best asset is Fanning. She plays Alice as someone already older than the movie around her, and the scenes between Alice and Joe carry more charge than any of the creature material. Chandler does the heavy lifting on the adult side, playing a father whose grief has hardened into blame. He blames Louis Dainard for Elizabeth’s death because Dainard had a hangover, which meant Elizabeth had to cover his shift.
That is the emotional engine of Super 8, and it is a good one. Two families wrecked by the same accident, and two kids trying to be friends across it.
Abrams Has Two Movies Here
The problem is that Abrams has two movies here and keeps switching between them. One is a small, specific story about a town and a father and a son. The other is a monster movie with a military cover-up and a creature that wants to go home.
The second movie is much less interesting than the first, and it takes over.
The white cubes, the stolen electronics, the fluctuating power — these are all pieces of the same mystery, and Abrams is careful to keep them unexplained for a long time. But the explanation, when it comes, is thin. The Alien is a captive trying to leave. Nelec is a man obsessed with killing it. Woodward is the doctor who knew it first. That is a serviceable skeleton, but it does not carry the weight the film puts on it.
What Super 8 does have is texture. The late-1970s Ohio setting is not just decoration. The kids are making a Super 8 movie because that is what kids in 1979 had. The film is named after the format. The competition they are shooting for is the reason they are at the depot at all. Abrams is making a movie about making movies, and the zombie film inside Super 8 is a genuine pleasure — the kids arguing over takes, the cheap makeup, the seriousness they bring to it.
The derailment sequence works because it interrupts that. The kids are doing something small and silly and then the world breaks open.
What the $260 Million Buys
Super 8 grossed over $260 million worldwide after its release on June 10, 2011. It received positive reviews from critics and was nominated and won numerous accolades. The published critical score is 7.2/10, with a Metacritic score of 72/100.
That 7.2 is the right number, and here is why. Super 8 is a good movie with a great first act and a weaker back half. The train crash, the kids, the zombie film, the locket, the two fathers — all of that is strong. The creature, the cover-up, the lethal injection, the rampage — that is where the film gets generic.
The Alien is the least interesting character in a movie that has Elle Fanning in it. That is the whole problem in one sentence.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| June 10, 2011 | Super 8 released in theaters |
| 2011 | Grosses over $260 million worldwide |
| 2011 | Published critical score: 7.2/10 (Metacritic 72/100) |
Abrams is a director who knows how to build a set piece. The train depot is proof. He is also a director who, in 2011, had not yet figured out how to land a third act that lives up to the first. Super 8 spends its best energy on the setup and then hands the ending to a monster.
What stays with you is not the Alien. It is Joe holding the locket. It is Alice on the bike. It is Charles yelling at his friends to get the shot. It is a town in Ohio where the power keeps flickering and nobody can say why.
The film is worth watching for the first hour. The second hour is where it settles for less than it had.
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