Writen & Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, Super 8 is set in the summer of 1979, when a group of friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while making a super 8 movie and soon suspect that it was not an accident. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth - something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.
Was it good?
I think if you were a fan of one of my favourite child hood films, namely “The Goonies” which was also executively produced by Steven Spielberg, then you will probably take a liking to Super 8.
Mind you I’m not sure if it has that same lasting appeal because when I first checked this out at the cinema I thought it was good, but when watching the film on DVD/Blu-Ray I became a little bored the second time round.
The storyline is pretty geeky and has that buddy comradeship of the Goonies but the film doesn’t quite have the same magic, in that parts of the film can be a little long winded.
It starts off with a bunch of kids looking to make a movie with their Super 8 film, they sneak out at midnight to a Railway station to do some filming and everything is going ok until they see a truck collide with a train and the latter spills out something supernatural in origin!
The kids of course get a scare but they don’t really see the above event unfold and the next day they try to find excuses to shrug off the happenings of the previous night. It’s only when people from the town start disappearing that they get suspicious and things then start to get more interesting.
Mind you while it sounds pretty scary stuff, you only get rare glimpses of the creature that escaped from the train and most of the time the director (J.J. Abrams) is playing on your imagination to help you conjure up what the creature looks like in your mind. This for me was what made the film fall down slightly as the director and producers took this a step to far.
For example things get so bad in the town that they bring in the military, but all you see them do is fire blindly at a creature that you don’t really see – it’s one way to cut down on costs I suppose.
Of course when you do finally see the creature its nothing like what you expected, though of course this depends on your imagination.
Super 8 is not a bad film, as the kids/supporting adult cast do a great job with the acting, however it still lacks that real - Goonie - adventure element that could have made this film another classic.
On a positive end note one of the best bits of the film comes at the end credits, here you get to see the Super 8 film that the kids were making.
http://youtu.be/kRx8KXBzGME
