In the summer of 1979, 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.
Usually when I sit down to write a review it sort of comes fairly easy, but with this film I’m finding it extremely hard where to start. SUPER 8 is just one of those films that surpasses any sort of pre conceived notion I had, I can usually pick if a film is going to be good or if its going to be bad.. But walking out SUPER 8 I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.
J.J Abrams is one smart man coming off creating TV Shows like ‘Lost’ and ‘Alias’, the marketing for this film was perfect.. the trailer showed enough but not to much, just enough to tweak the ‘I need to check that out’ in me, it didn’t give any major plot points away and it introduced me to the characters even the poster was plain, there was only two of them one the lens of a Super 8 Camera and the other a landscape with some shadows of kids and to be honest with you it was really quite refreshing, as someone who owns a film website I do watch a lot of trailers and clips.
The most incredible part of the entire film though was the casting of relatively unknown actors, the lead Joel Courtney had no acting experience at all but he pulled off the role of Joe Lamb with such ease and there are quite a number of rather emotional scenes for this young 15 year old to deal with and you wouldn’t know it was his first acting role. Elle Fanning who was in last years “Somewhere” and the little sister to Dakota Fanning just oozes talent (some may say more then her sister) and basically the entire group of kids were impressive, you have Ryan Lee who plays Cary the little pyrotechnic who likes to blow up things and is just absolutely hilarious and Charles played by Riley Griffiths who directs the Zombie film there was just so much talent by this young bunch, it will be interesting to see how there careers pan out. Onto the Adult main Kyle Chandler who plays Deputy Sheriff Jackson Lamb is brilliant also, I’ve been a massive fan of him ever since he starred in the TV show “Early Edition” back in the 90’s.
As I said earlier its a brilliant movie, well paced, well scripted, sensational dialog, the look of the film is impressive and the CGI elements of the film really work well and for me being an 80’s baby its hit every single heart string possible and I just can’t describe enough how amazing this film is. I am partial to talking up a film, but a couple of my other writers just walked out of seeing Super 8 and I received this text message from Leith saying ‘Super 8, yeah that’s something pretty special right”.
After seeing SUPER 8 I realised this is the movie I had been waiting to see all year and I’m pretty damn sure you will feel the same. I for one will be back at the cinema on the 9th June to see it again. I give this film 5 out of 5.
My interview with Joel Courtney the star of Super 8 will be online early next week and you can see the full trailer for Super 8 here
(And yes that’s the first 5/5 I have ever given)