Friday, December 2, 2011

SUPER 8 (2011)

SUPER 8 is the story about some small town kids back in 1979 who are out one night filming a zombie movie. During the middle of shooting a scene near a train station, some maniac rams his truck head on into into a fast-moving military freight train. The truck explodes into a fireball and the train derails all over the joint. Somehow, all of the kids survive the disaster without any injuries. Afterwards, they're stumbling around the wreckage when they find the driver of the truck alive! He tells them to get out of here and to never talk about what they saw or else them and their parents will be killed. That scares the shit out of the kids, so they skedaddle and keep the fact they were there a secret.

Almost instantly, the military arrives and locks the town down and starts an intense investigation into the wreck and the now missing cargo. At the same time, all of the dogs in town run away and random people start disappearing. What's going on?! Something cool I hope and not something extremely simple and boring that we've already seen a million times before...well, you're out of luck. It's exactly what you think it is and nothing new or clever happens at all. In fact, it's kinda lame.

Technically the film was fine. Even with the rampant lens flare bullshit, the film looks good and the actors where all impressive. Going into the movie I was hoping for an engaging story built around strong characters, instead I got a watered down story build around predictable characters.

Worth watching, it is a good time waster, but I was really hoping for something...more. If you need me, I'll be in my room reading Robert McCammon's "Boy's Life" while watching Stranger Things.