Super 8 (2011 - 10th Anniversary) Review

 

I don’t always get the chance to do a special ‘Anniversary’ review for a film, but for this year, there was one that I knew that I wanted to do since the film in question is one of my favorite films of all-time from one of my favorite directors. Said film came out on June 10^th, 2011, a little less than a year before I officially started this site in May of 2012. Thus, my original review for that film was on my old Rotten Tomatoes account and the only instances where I’ve ever addressed it on this site were A.) whenever I mention it as a part of its director’s filmography and B.) an incredibly old and thoroughly outdated post that I did in 2013 where I listed my Top 10 Favorite Films of 2011. But today, in honor of the 10^th anniversary of its release, it’s time for us to take a proper look at the 2011 sci-fi/monster adventure, Super 8. Super 8 was the third feature-length directorial outing from J.J. Abrams and was an original project that he made in-between the two Star Trek films that he directed, the franchise’s titular 2009 reboot and its 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. Much of the film was inspired by Abrams’ experiences making Super 8 films when he was younger, including a notable run-in with none other than the legendary Steven Spielberg, who had once hired him to repair some of his old Super 8 reels. And if that wasn’t enough, Super 8 is produced by Spielberg via his production company, Amblin Entertainment. So, in other words, Super 8 can very much be described as a modern-day Spielberg film albeit one that wasn’t directed by the man himself. And while some have argued that its attempts at paying homage to the films that inspired it may have been a bit too much (which, ironically, wouldn’t be the only time that this argument has been applied to a J.J. Abrams film), it’s also one of the main reasons why this film has thoroughly stuck with me after all these years.

In 1979 in the town of Lillian, Ohio, teenager Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) suffers a devastating tragedy when his mother Elizabeth (Caitriona Balfe) is killed in a steel factory accident. Several months later, Joe begins to help his best friend Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths) produce a zombie film for a local Super 8 film competition along with their friends Cary McCarthy (Ryan Lee), Martin Reed (Gabriel Basso), and Zach Mills (Preston Scott). Charles also recruits the help of their classmate Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) despite the intense animosity between her father Louis (Ron Eldard) and Joe’s father Jack (Kyle Chandler), the town’s Deputy Sheriff, for the former’s inadvertent role in Elizabeth’s death. While filming at a train station one night, they witness an Air Force train get into a head-on collision with a truck, and while they barely manage to survive the experience, something mysterious breaks free from the train that begins to cause a series of strange incidents all over town with multiple people disappearing. Eventually, the gang realizes that they managed to get a glimpse of whatever broke out of the train on film, thus leading them on a journey to try and find it before the Air Force ends up destroying it.

When people say that this is basically J.J. Abrams’ ‘Spielberg film’, it’s admittedly quite easy to see why and not just because Spielberg himself produced it. From a narrative standpoint, Super 8 thoroughly maintains a lot of the story beats that defined many of Spielberg’s most iconic films, especially when it comes to the overall concept of kids from a quiet town going through a truly otherworldly experience as seen in films like E.T. and The Goonies (even though Spielberg technically didn’t direct the latter). And while I know that some critics gave Abrams some major flak for how overt his homages to Spielberg’s work were, I think that he handles this aspect of the film excellently, thus giving Super 8 a pleasantly nostalgic vibe but one that’s done under a modern aesthetic. Really, the only ‘Spielberg trope’ that he didn’t need to utilize here was the decision to not overtly show this film’s alien creature for most of the run-time. Sure, it worked with the shark in Jaws but that was back in the ’70s and was a result of Spielberg overcoming the problems that stemmed from the mechanical sharks that were used during the production which, as you can probably guess, is something that usually isn’t an issue nowadays in an age where most visual effects are CGI-based. And yet, this doesn’t prevent the film from being a wholly engaging story that also excellently hits its biggest emotional beats. I’ve always felt that one of J.J. Abrams’ best traits as a director is his strong handling of a story’s most important emotional moments and Super 8 is another prime example of that as it explores how both the Lamb and Dainard families have struggled to cope with the accident that has forever tied them together.

It also goes without saying that one of the biggest ways in which this film pays tribute to the Spielberg aesthetic is how it largely relies on a cast that’s primarily made up of kids. Back when Super 8 first came out, almost all its young leads were genuine newcomers, and while several of them have gone on to be in other projects since then, Elle Fanning was basically the only one of them who had any sort of experience in the industry at that time. Despite this, however, they all do a fantastic job in their respective roles. Their camaraderie is top-notch and while the story does mainly focus on its two main protagonists, Joe and Alice, the other members of the group do get to have their standout moments, from Charles getting a lot of the best comedic lines (which helps to make up for his admittedly abrasive personality) and Cary’s overt obsession with fireworks that other characters find concerning. Ultimately, though, the biggest stars of the show are Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning. Fanning is arguably the biggest standout of the entire film, showcasing some impressive maturity for her age, and while Courtney’s performance is more subdued by comparison, it still very much feels right in line with other similarly aged Spielberg-esque protagonists such as Elliott from E.T. Finally, to close out the main cast, we have a solid trio of performances from the film’s adult leads; Kyle Chandler as Joe’s father Jack, who struggles to reconnect with his son, Ron Eldard as Alice’s drunk but emotionally traumatized father Louis, and Noah Emmerich, who’s appropriately sinister as Nelec, the Air Force colonel who’s revealed to have a history with the alien creature that has been unleashed on the town.  

I still fondly remember the anticipation that I had for this film’s release, which all started when its first trailer ran in front of Iron Man 2 all the way back in 2010. Since this was right around the time that J.J. Abrams’ first Star Trek film was quickly becoming one of my favorite films of all time, I was very much hyped to see his next film, especially since it was going to be produced by the one and only Steven Spielberg. And while I wouldn’t properly play it until many years after both it and the film’s release, it’s also cool to note how Super 8 was promoted by one of the most popular video games of the year, Portal 2, which featured an ‘interactive trailer’ for the film that put players on the Air Force train that carries the alien creature as it gets into its big crash. Basically, to make a long story short, Super 8 was a prime example of J.J. Abrams’ ‘mystery box’ approach to marketing his films so that he could avoid the leak of major spoilers. Granted, this trademark of his ended up attracting a mostly negative reaction from both critics and audiences due to its debatable effectiveness, especially in the wake of Star Trek Into Darkness’ big reveal surrounding its take on the character Khan Noonien Singh. That said, though, I do think that he deserves credit for what I view as a noble attempt at pulling all this off in an age where film-related spoilers and leaks are practically commonplace. Now, with all that in mind, I can freely admit that I don’t necessarily consider Super 8 to be J.J.’s best film, mostly due to a few plot elements here and there that could’ve benefitted from some additional development.  

Ultimately, though, it’s safe to say that the biggest talking point surrounding this film was its status as Abrams’ tribute to the filmography of Steven Spielberg, a move that attracted both its fans… and its critics. In other words, the discourse surrounding this film isn’t that far off from the ongoing debate that film fandom has had these past few years about nostalgia in general and how it’s heavily defined a lot of recent media. Case in point, as I alluded to back in the intro, this was not the first time (nor was it the last, for that matter) that a J.J. Abrams film attracted a bunch of attention over its nostalgic elements; just look at how a nagging nitpick about The Force Awakens ended up becoming the defining criticism of The Rise of Skywalker. And yet, as someone who considers himself to have a neutral stance on the whole nostalgia debate (in other words, someone who’s totally fine with it but not to the point where it’d cloud my judgment on anything), I believe that J.J. Abrams very much succeeded in making this his ‘Spielberg film’. In fact, I’d even bet that anyone who goes into this completely unaware of the fact that J.J. Abrams directed it wouldn’t have guessed that it wasn’t a Steven Spielberg directed film until the end credits. In short, while I may not have been alive during the era in which this film takes place, it wholly succeeds in bringing you back to a time where Steven Spielberg gave us some of the greatest films of all-time, effectively making Super 8 the second J.J. Abrams directed film after 2009’s Star Trek that will always have its place as one of my favorite films of all time.

Rating: 5/5!

Goosebumps (2015) review

If you’re a 90’s kid, then you’ll probably remember the classic horror franchise ‘Goosebumps’. Created in 1992 by R.L. Stine, ‘the Stephen King of children’s literature’, ‘Goosebumps’ both delighted and terrified audiences with its kid-friendly scary stories and surreal nature. As some would put it, it was sort of like a kid-friendly version of ‘Tales from the Crypt’ and of course it became a phenomenon, selling over 350 million books worldwide and even spawning a successful TV series that ran for 4 seasons from 1995 to 1998. And now in 2015, the characters of R.L. Stine’s books come to the big screen in a brand new ‘Goosebumps’ film. Given the anthology nature of the series, it did raise some questions about what kind of approach the filmmakers would take in translating the series to the big screen. Would this be a case of them adapting a single storyline at a time, resulting in a new horror film franchise? Ultimately the answer to that question is no because the route that they do take ends up being more meta in execution; one in which Stine himself is an actual character in the plot. And to the surprise of many, this film has actually been doing pretty well with critics, which I guess primarily stems from the fact that the last film the duo of director Rob Letterman and lead Jack Black worked on was 2010’s infamous remake of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. But at the end of the day, their third film collaboration actually ends up being a pretty fun family horror film with a wide array of zany monsters and a surprising amount of heart.

The film begins as teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) and his mother Gale (Amy Ryan) move from New York to the town of Madison, Delaware when his mother is hired to be the new vice-principal at the local high school. After they move in, Zach immediately befriends his next-door neighbor Hannah (Odeya Rush) but is warned by her mysterious father ‘Mr. Shivers’ (Jack Black) to stay away from her. One night when he hears her screaming, Zach and his new friend Champ (Ryan Lee) sneak into her house to try and find her. There they are surprised to come across numerous manuscripts of ‘Goosebumps’ stories but when they end up opening one of them, the monster of that story is released straight from the pages of the book. Zach and Champ soon learn that ‘Mr. Shivers’ is actually R.L. Stine himself and that the monsters that he had created in his stories had come to life when he was younger and had been trapped within the manuscripts so that they wouldn’t cause any trouble. But as a result of Zach and Champ’s interference, Stine’s other creations, led by the villainous wooden dummy Slappy (voiced by Black, who also voices the Invisible Boy), break out of their books as well with the intent on terrorizing the neighborhood and getting revenge upon Stine for trapping them within their manuscripts for so long, leaving Zach, Hannah, Stine, and Champ to try and defeat all of the author’s crazy creations.

Old-school ‘Goosebumps’ fans will most certainly appreciate the numerous amount of references and call-backs that are made to classic ‘Goosebumps’ stories. As noted earlier, because this is not just a case where one single ‘Goosebumps’ story is being adapted to film, this film basically features every major monster/creature from the original book series. Though with that said, because there are so many featured, some do get more attention than others, namely Slappy being that he’s basically the main villain of the film and it wouldn’t really be a ‘Goosebumps’ film without him. As for younger audiences who may not be that familiar with the series or are 100% newcomers to the franchise, the film will still manage to hold their interest with its large array of crazy monsters, likable lead characters, and its overall light-hearted tone. The film admittedly suffers at times due to how rushed it is due to the pacing but that also means that the film never really drags at any point either, although I will say that the film doesn’t really get going until the monsters start getting released from their books. I also can’t really go as far as to say that it’s the ‘scariest’ PG-rated horror film ever made as the film is more action/effects oriented, though this may also just be due to the fact that I’m older and have seen more adult-oriented horror films.

One of the things that surprised me the most about this film was that it had a surprising amount of heart. A lot of this comes from the two main leads, Zach and Hannah. Both Dylan Minnette and Odeya Rush do excellent jobs here; they have strong romantic chemistry and the romance between their characters is actually really sweet as far as teen romances are concerned. The two also end up having their own personal emotional arcs throughout the film. In the case of Zach, it’s him coping with the loss of his father, which is really conveyed well in a particularly touching scene near the beginning in which he looks at old footage of him and his dad. As for Hannah, it involves a particular plot point that I won’t spoil here but needless to say it’s a neatly executed twist that pays homage to a classic ‘Goosebumps’ story. Ryan Lee (AKA the fireworks-loving Cary from ‘Super 8’) is a major standout as well as the hopeless romantic but loyal friend Champ. The fact that I’m highlighting the kid actors first shows that despite having top billing, Jack Black as R.L. Stine actually isn’t the main character of the film. But even with that in mind, Black still does a really good job in the role and has his fair share of humorous lines, like a scene in which Stine makes a jab at Stephen King after being goaded into it by Zach. Black also does a nice job in providing the voice for Slappy and it should also be noted that the film version of Slappy is clearly modeled after Black as Stine.

As noted earlier, ‘Goosebumps’ is basically one of the big film ‘surprises’ of the year. That is because I have the feeling that many people weren’t expecting that much out of a film based off of a book series that has been around since the 90’s. But at the end of the day, ‘Goosebumps’ actually does avoid being nothing more than a cynical cash grab by instead being a fun little horror adventure that may not be the scariest family horror film of all-time but one that I think that both kids and adults can both enjoy. In the case of kids, it’s getting to see all of the fun and zany monsters while those who grew up with the ‘Goosebumps’ books and TV series will get a good dose of nostalgia. You’ll also be surprised to see that the film actually has a lot of charm and heart to it as well, which primarily stems from the genuinely sweet teen romance between the two main leads. I’ll admit that I’m not a ‘mega fan’ of this series despite being a part of the generation that grew up with it. I have read a few of the books and have watched multiple episodes of the TV series but it’s been a while since I’ve done either so I went into this film with a more casual perspective. And with that in mind I will say that this film is generally accessible to anyone whether they’re a fan of the series or not. If this ends up warranting a sequel then that gives Sony two big family-friendly horror-themed film franchises that they can work with, the other being the ‘Hotel Transylvania’ films.

Rating: 3.5/5