Fridae

Super 8 is a rare pleasurable treat as summer blockbuster season rolls around. JJ Abrams, one of today’s top purveyors of quality pop entertainment, previously gave us his bombastic but beautiful reboot of Star Trek. At his best he is a filmmaker that can balance the right amounts of characterisation, slam-bang action and thematic resonance while revitalising the conventions of the classic pulp fiction he clearly loves and is indebted to. He knows the childhood fantasies and dreams that haunt his adult audiences.

Super 8 is a loving tribute to the films that Abrams obviously grew up with: the early 80s output of Spielberg, Reiner and Donner’s kid-oriented adventure pictures (ET, Stand by Me, The Goonies), as well as the socially-conscious horror films of George A Romero (The Living Dead series, The Crazies). While riffing on those conventions, the film itself is also a loving tribute to filmmaking and the relationship of art and life in the manner of Shakespeare in Love.

In place of the bard here, we have a group of kids led by Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths), a fat, blustery pubescent Orson Welles leading his intrepid crew to shoot his zombie film “The Case” (which is featured as a film-in-film over the end credits, so do stay for them). If he is our mini-Shakespeare, then his pint-sized Gwyneth Paltrow muse arrives in the form of the equally lithe blonde Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning, Dakota’s sister), who has signed on as his female lead. Makeup boy Joe (Joel Courtney) however, is the one who Alice has eyes for, and their tensions simmer on set as they carry out their shy courtship behind the scenes. Joe is not having it easy himself, with painting and making models his sole comfort with the loss of his mother recently in a factory accident, while his father, town Deputy Sheriff Jackson (Kyle Chandler) is being swamped with numerous calls about missing metal parts, pets and people.

What Jackson does not know is that the kids were witness to a terrible train crash that involved high school teacher Dr Woodward, and during which something not quite of this world escaped. And that the horrors that they are about to face will dwarf nearly anything involving zombies, as the military becomes involved and all hell breaks loose upon the small town of Lilian, Ohio.

This movie shows the pains and jealousies of early adolescence in all their warts-and-all glory, just as it does not flinch from any of the horrors that its young protagonists are subject to, be it the loss of a parent, being subjected to the horrors of war, or seeing their fellow humans dismembered, as the events build to a shattering and yet beautiful climax. The casting of the children is near perfect, these aren’t smart mouthed movie kids, but believable in the way that real children are: mostly kind, occasionally cruel, but strong and resilient in a way that will be lost as they grow into adulthood.  At its heart is a story about how art and play are simply at heart, our best mechanisms for coping with the tragedies of living. You leave the theatre wondering where Charlie Kaznyk, Joe, Alice and their friends are now, and imagine that somewhere out there, on a Hollywood backlot, they are making their next big blockbuster as adults.