Review - Super 8

Art imitates art in Super 8, J.J. Abrams love letter to Steven Spielberg, but just like a carbon copy of a piece of paper, the imitation is of noticeably lower quality.

Joe Lamb, played with sincere effort by newcomer Joel Courtney, is mourning the tragic loss of his mother at picture's beginning, immediately establishing him as the sort of emotionally malnourished central character we often saw portrayed in Spielberg's vintage works. He spends his summer days helping a group a friends make an amateur zombie movie. The band of bike-riding filmmakers include a bossy director, an easily nauseated leading man, a pyromaniacal effects artist, and a new leading lady (the wonderful Elle Fanning) whose puppy love affair with sympathetic Joe ratchets the cute factor up to eleven. While filming a key scene by the railroad station, they witness the train wreck (so spectacular it screams “Hollywood fakery”) that unleashes a mysteriously threatening creature upon their unsuspecting middle American burg. It isn't long before Joe's father, the local deputy (Kyle Chandler), begins to catch wind of strange goings-on from paranoid townsfolk.