A train crash unlike any other.
The setting is 1979. Small Ohio town. Six teenagers are filming a zombie movie at a train depot when suddenly a truck appears on the tracks. It drives at top speed toward the oncoming train and, to their horror, collides with it entirely, causing a derailment. The half-dozen kids scatter to avoid the sudden downpour of fiery debris, and one of them soon discovers this is no ordinary train: Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) sees and hears loud thudding from inside one of the overturned cars, culminating in a mysterious creature bursting forth from it and escaping into the night.
This sequence, hinted at throughout the Super 8 advertising campaign, is a hook that stands the test of time. Childhood is a period of life filled with magic and terror in equal parts, when the future is idealistically viewed as brimming with potential — and yet in which the agonies involved with being alive are felt much more acutely than is the case among experience-hardened adults. Perhaps this is why children gravitate toward horror movies, despite the best efforts of some adults to keep them away from the genre. No matter how seemingly outlandish a scary story may be, the best horror flicks speak to deeper emotional truths beneath the blood, gore, and high-concept premises.
Because Super 8 celebrates its 15th anniversary this month — and because its co-producer, Steven Spielberg, has a new alien-based movie out called Disclosure Day — Super 8 deserves to be celebrated. Not only does Super 8 hold up a decade and a half later in its writing, acting, special effects, and cinematography, but it is also the perfect gateway horror movie for both children and those who are children at heart.
In short, Super 8 is the rare fright flick that also qualifies as top-notch family entertainment.
One part Spielberg, one part Stranger Things — brought to you by J. J. Abrams.
Super 8 works in no small part because of its impressive pedigree. Directed and written by the soon-to-be-legendary film director J. J. Abrams (who at this point had only helmed Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek), Super 8 is covered with Spielberg’s creative fingerprints. Because the beastie in the boxcar’s belly is an alien, Super 8 evokes Spielberg’s sci-fi classics Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds. Similarly, it combines a genuinely terrifying scenario with a childlike whimsy, much like other Spielberg-produced classics such as Gremlins and The Goonies.
Yet Super 8 does not need to be compared to other movies to hold up on its own. In addition to being a fast-paced thriller brimming with memorable action set pieces, Super 8 is also a poignant character study. Joe, the chief protagonist, is mourning the death of his mother, as is his father, Deputy Jack Lamb (Kyle Chandler). Joe’s best friend Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths), an aspiring filmmaker, is ambitious and determined to realize his creative dreams, although he also harbors an unrequited crush on Joe’s eventual love interest, Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning). Joe’s romance with Alice is complicated by the fact that Joe’s mother died covering the shift of Alice’s alcoholic father, Louis (Ron Eldard), who was suffering from a hangover. Joe does not blame the Dainards for his mother’s death… but Jack does.
In the middle of all this, Super 8 is chock full of quirky supporting characters who are just plausible enough to feel like real human beings. From Joe’s friends, pyromaniac Cary McCarthy (Ryan Lee) and math nerd Preston Scott (Zach Mills), to the grim alien-hunting Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) and the alien liberator/high school biology teacher Dr. Thomas Woodward (Glynn Turman), Super 8 stands out in its deep understanding of the human beings that populate its narrative. Just as importantly, it has something important to say about each of these people, with major and minor characters alike receiving their own story arcs that are both intrinsically satisfying and connected to deeper truths about existing in this universe.
All of this culminates in a climax that some audience members found corny and maudlin, but I found deeply cathartic when I first saw Super 8 in my local movie theater (in Pennsylvania, the state east of Ohio). Upon rewatching Super 8, I am struck by how the film culminates in a moment that figuratively, and to some extent literally, brings all of the major characters and themes together. The lesson of Super 8 is that trauma is a universal emotion — but that, however difficult doing so might seem to be, it can also be overcome.
Super 8 Embraces the Joy of Filmmaking.
In addition to the larger story told by Super 8, there is also a charming short horror film embedded in the larger plot. After all, those six teenagers weren’t at that train depot by coincidence. They were filming “The Case,” a zombie movie directed and written by Charles, with a zeal that one suspects may mirror that of a young J. J. Abrams (Abrams was born in 1966, meaning he would have been a 13-year-old in 1979, roughly the same age as Super 8‘s teenage main characters). If you stay through the end, you get to see “The Case” as envisioned by Kaznyk and company, and Abrams cleverly keeps it at a teen level of technical competence while still allowing it to be entertaining in its own right.
Nor is this Super 8‘s only testament to the power of filmmaking. Even the movie’s title refers to the type of video camera that aspiring filmmakers generally used in 1979, and with which our heroes record the fateful train crash. Perhaps most notably, though, Super 8 foreshadowed the TV series Stranger Things in being (a) a period piece brimming with love for its moment in history and (b) chock full of homages to cinematic classics. Culturally savvy viewers will pick up references to both the aforementioned Spielberg movies and other Spielberg fare like Jaws and Jurassic Park, as well as the filmographies of George Romero, George Lucas, Richard Donner, and Joe Dante. It is also, very much like Stranger Things, determined not merely to channel those other movies but to serve as a worthy entry into the horror/sci-fi/fantasy genres in its own right.
For all of these reasons, I argue that Super 8 is a “perfect” movie.
When I say “perfect movie,” I don’t mean a film devoid of any continuity errors or plot holes. Indeed, I’m sure the nitpicky among us could easily find and focus exclusively on those. Instead, I say it is a “perfect movie” because it can be rewatched without ever losing its feeling of freshness and wonder, and because there are no flaws that retroactively diminish the experience.
For these same reasons, I often refer to movies from quite different genres as “perfect.” Groundhog Day is a perfect comedy; Ghostbusters is a perfect sci-fi comedy; Pulp Fiction is a perfect crime movie; When Harry Met Sally is a perfect romance; Barbie is a perfect satirical fantasy; and so on.
I suspect that if a real alien civilization visited Earth and wanted to understand both our struggles as a species and our capacity for artistic greatness, they would see much to appreciate in Super 8. It speaks to timeless themes through a lens of cultural nostalgia that nevertheless grounds it firmly in the present (2011, 2026, it doesn’t matter; any “present” will do).
While I wrote earlier that this is a fantastic gateway horror movie for children, adults, and whole families, that characterization actually undersells Super 8. It is, fundamentally, just a fantastic story superbly told by filmmakers who have mastered their craft. Watch it for the first time, and you’ll be engrossed; rewatch it on any number of occasions, and you will always find something new and wonderful to discover.
If that doesn’t make a movie “perfect,” I don’t know what does.
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