SUPER 8 (2011) REVIEW: Dir. JJ Abrams

As before, apologies for the delay in any reviews, things have been incredibly busy and i've kind of been stumped when it comes to writing, anyway, I did get to watch the one film i was most excited about seeing this year. SUPER 8, JJ Abrams' homage to the Amblin films of the 70s and 80s and this one's a good'un....

!!WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!

This was the film I was most looking forward to this year, a film that would supposedly take me back to days of the Amblin style movies, adventure and sci-fi and aimed at a family audience. JJ Abrams 'homage' to Steven Spielberg, is in a way a non-Spielberg Spielberg film, you have everything from a group of Goonie-esq kids, an alien, a military cover up, a small mid-western town, a deputy sheriff and the drama of a 'broken' family, but what Abrams did, instead of completely ripping off E.T, Close Encounters and Jaws, was make a film that could be placed along side those films. And while it is an affectionate homage to the days of that kind of story telling and it's Spielberg influences, there are a lot more films that it homages that might not be as obvious as say the E.T or Close Encounters references.

What you basically have is Abrams throwing everything he loves about 80s films into the mix, a lot like Neill Marshall tried with his Doomsday film and what Tarantino does with almost all of his movies, but SUPER 8 is a more accessible film, it's aimed at a family audience, it stars kids as the main characters and it's exciting and visually stunning.

The plot follows a group of kids making a short film for a contest. While filming one night they witness a horrific train crash and narrowly escape death. But something else escapes from the train, something big and something dangerous. The Military arrive and start covering everything up then strange things happen and it's up to the kids and the deputy sheriff to uncover what was on the train and why the army are covering it up.

I had to write that with out giving away to much of the plot as we'd be in spoiler territory then, but let me just say that Super 8 is much more than that. There is the human family drama that was so prevalent in Spielberg's movies, Joe the main kid has recently lost his mother in an accident, His father, the deputy sheriff doesn't really know his son and blames the father of Elle Fanning's character for the death of his wife. So you have that element of drama in a film that is really there to go ooh its' like an 80s film. But this, like it did in Spielberg's films, works really well.

The one thing i've noticed all reviews for SUPER 8 films have said is that it's not entirely a 'Spielberg' film, well that reason is because IT'S NOT A SPIELBERG FILM!, it's a JJ Abrams film, made in the style of one of the Amblin movies. I was a big fan of Lost, never really saw Felicity, was a big fan of Alias and enjoyed M:I3, Star Trek on the other hand I was not a fan of the first time around, it seemed to shiny, too new, as if everything had just been installed by the apple company and people were scared of getting a mark on the stuff, plus I was slightly pissed that they kind of forgot about 40 years of Star Trek history but on repeated viewings I found myself enjoying that film more and more, im still not a major fan of it but it's a quality piece of film making and I guess because Star Trek made a shit ton of money, He was able to get this film done. One thing that did amaze me when researching SUPER 8 was for a film like this it was relatively low-budget compared to what the budget on Star Trek was, Costing $50,000,000, which is $90,000,000 less than Star Trek, Abrams has thrown every penny at the screen and it pays off, The film looks great, the crash sequence alone is brilliantly staged, not as clever as The plane crash in Alex Proyas' Knowing but still very well done, as well as the military attack which while watching seems as though they're just randomly firing when the monster is nowhere to be seen, but this is just a minor flaw in the production and is still very well handled.

The cast are also first rate, the kids especially, sometimes with films that have kids as the main characters, they tend to be real fucking annoying, but here, the kids are likeable, much like the kids in Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, another film which looks to be referenced in the film, these kids are innocent, they just wanted to make their film and carry on being kids. There is one scene in which Joe and his father are eating food and the dad hands Joe a baseball camp flier, Joe wants to stay and help his friends, he doesn't want to spend his summer learning how to hit a ball, he wants to spend it, creating make FX and doing what he loves, but the dad, out of touch with his kid, dismisses it as childish. And like stand by me, these kids set off on a journey that ends with them all kind of growing up a little. Abrams script also has them talk the way kids would, using words like 'Mint' and 'Shit-head' which you would scarcely find in a PG these days but was allowed back in the late 70s/80s films. This adds a bit more authenticity to the film for the period it's set. Sometimes the fashion comes across as a bit That 70's Show but it's still pretty much bang on for the time, the production design is outstanding.

But putting everyone to shame is Elle Fanning who much like her sister is pretty much a veteran actress compared to the rest of kids, She is just crazy fucking good as Alice, the object of Joe's affection, and out acts pretty much everyone one screen.

Noah Emmerich, a very underrated actor, appears as the military commander Nelec who will, as it seems, stop at nothing to capture the creature. Emmerich gives Nelec this mysterious edge and he does really well.

So what about all these references and homage's Pete?

There are so many I don't want to spoil it, but i'll go over a few. Bare in mind this section is going to contain some spoilers.

1. First off you have the 'broken family', this appears in Close Encounters and E.T.
2. The deputy Sheriff is essentially chief Brody from Jaws.
3. The mid-western, while looking like it comes from any 70s produced movie, looks a lot like the streets in slasher film Slumber Party Massacre, which Abrams has gone on record as saying that it was one of the main influences on the film.
4. The Korean film, The Host, is homage'd with the creature being subterranean.
5. The underground tunnels are made to look like the alien ship from Ridley Scott's Alien
6. The kids enter the subterranean levels to discover the creature building a spacecraft, exactly like MacCready finds Blair doing in the ice cave in The Thing (1982)
7. whether this is a homage or maybe me just thinking this but the creature bares a striking resemblance to the Cloverfield monster.
8. There's the obvious goonies reference, a group of kids on an adventure
9. The truck on the rail track, obviously influenced by Roy Neary's truck being parked next to the rail in Close Encounters....

The list goes on. They are all really well done and unlike most films that have problems in referencing, such as the recent film PAUL in which every geek reference was set up before being shown, SUPER 8 does this knowing the people who will dig this the most are the people who dug those films that he is referencing. Which is a clever ploy on Abrams part.

But alas, for me I think the film is missing something, maybe more screen time for the creature perhaps, a BMX chase maybe, A John Williams score? Could be, but as this is NOT a Spielberg film it's easy to see that Abrams, although channelling the style of the Berg, decided to make this his own, which is great. Michael Giacchino's score does hark back to the epic overtures of Williams, but gives the film an original style of it own which adds highly to the film.

So I have to finish my review for SUPER 8.

SUPER 8 is the kind of film I get goosebumps about, it's not a remake, a reboot, a toy franchise or a sequel. It's an original story, with actual acting, a small amout of FX for the most part and has had a lot of love and care put into it, unlike The Transformers films that are just being made to make a shit load of money, and Spielberg's producing those, maybe he see's Abrams as talented and Bay as a cash cow, Make one for money, make another for entertainment and story telling, But this about SUPER 8, if you notice I haven't referred to the Alien as a monster, because I never saw it as a monster, he was just trying to get home, exactly like E.T and unfortunately a certain group of humans kept getting in his way, it's like D-FENZ, he just wants to get home. Anyway SUPER 8 is brilliant film making, with great story telling, acting and visual FX and I hope to god that more original films are made that can compete with this. This is a great film that I highly recommend to fans of nostalgic 80s sci-fi cinema and adventure films and anyone who wants to watch a good story driven film.....