Super 8



Super 8 is another one of those sci-fi/thrillers, written and directed by J. J. Abrams. Super 8 has a run time of 1 hour and 52 minutes and was first released on June 10, 2011. This film takes place during the summer of 1979, when 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.

Plot
The film begins in 1979, with Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb of Lillian, Ohio, and his 14 year old son Joe, mourning the death of their wife/mum, Elizabeth, following a steel mill accident.

Four months later, Joe's best friend, Charles, decides to make a low-budget zombie movie for an international film competition. Charles enlists the help of friends: Preston, Martin and Cary, as well as his crush Alice Dainard.

After Jack tries to convince Joe to go to a summer baseball camp, Joe sneaks out at midnight to help Charles film his movie. After the group meets, Alice picks them up in her dad's car and drives to a train depot. During a rehearsal for the scene, a train approaches and Charles has them start filming as the train passes to add "production value". While filming, Joe witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the tracks and rams into the train head-on, causing a massive derailment that destroys the train, the depot and the surrounding area. Amidst the chaos and flying debris, the children separate from each other. Joe then finds himself near one container when the loading door is violently thrown from the carriage by an unseen force.

Eventually, the kids regroup and investigate the wreckage. they find crates full of strange white cubes, the discover the truck's driver is Dr. Woodward, their biology teacher. Woodward, barely alive, warns them at gunpoint to forget what they saw that night, or else they and their parents will be killed. The children frantically pack up and flee the scene just as a convoy from the U.S. Air Force base, led by Colonel Nelec, arrives at the scene. Nelec discovers an empty Super 8 film box and assumes the event was purposely captured on camera.



While Joe and Charles wait for their film to be developed, Joe goes over to Alice's house to try and convince her to continue doing the movie. Just before he gets kicked out by Alice's dad, she changes her mind and says that she'll do it. Then, the group goes to the top of a hill, which overlooks the train wreck, and continues filming Charles' movie. After, they get food at the local diner and try to understand what happened the night of the crash.

Soon after, Jack does some detecting of his own and comes to the conclusion that something else is going on that the Air Force isn't telling him or the police about. Then, mysteriously, both Sherriff Pruitt and Breen, the cashier at the gas station, are taken by what seems to be some sort of creature.

At Charles' house, Joe does Alice's make up once again. Charles then gets jealous when he sees both Joe and Alice getting closer to one another.

Jack starts to investigate more into the strange events:
 * All the dogs running away
 * The destroyed gas station
 * Several townspeople going missing
 * The electrical power fluctuates
 * Motors and other electrical and mechanical devices are being stolen

When Jack holds a town meeting for people to ask questions about what is happening, Mr. McCandless steps forward and states that on his radio, there have been some frequencies that pick up distorted military chatter.



While Jack follows up on the lead, Alice is over at Joe's. He shows her the train that Charles and Cary want to blow up for the movie. Alice then asks about the necklace that he was holding, the night of the crash. He says that his dad gave it to his mum the day he was born and that she had worn it all the time. Charles then bursts into Joe's room and tells him that he has to now play the soldier as Evan blew him off, meaning that Joe will have to play the role of the soldier.

Another deputy then talks to Jack and says that there have been over 30 calls about local dogs, but the thing is, the calls aren't local. He says that it's like they all just ran away, in every direction. The radio then picks up, with Air Force officers saying to commence "Operation Walking Distance".

After, the group continue to film their movie, this time they have Air Force officers packing their trucks in the background. Jack then pulls up, tells Joe to get in the car and takes the camera that Charles is using to film his movie. Jack then walks up to Colonel Nelec and confronts him about knowing about Walking Distance. Nelec then proceeds to ask to talk with Jack, but not there.

After Jack drives Joe and himself home, he tells Joe that he is not allowed to be friends or spend time with Alice because her dad is nothing but trouble. Joe then speaks up and says that his dad doesn't know anything about him or Alice. Jack then says that her dad is an "irresponsible and selfish son of a bitch", before walking out of the house.

Joe then rides to the cemetery and sits next to his mum's grave. Then, he looks up to see that in the windows of the cemetery's garage, someone, or something, is digging up dirt.

When Jack drives to the Lillian Airfield, to meet Colonel Nelec, he is then surrounded by many Air Force officers and is put under military arrest, he has been set up.

The scene cuts to a room in which Dr. Woodward is strapped to a hospital bed. Nelec says that he has been through his things, trying to find his research. The research would help Nelec find evidence of the train crash and what Woodward or anyone else knew. Nelec then mentions that they never saw eye-to-eye with each other while working in the lab together. He also says that he knows that Woodward had someone document the train crash and that he would help him, if only he told him who filmed it. Nelec then goes on to say that he will "trap and bait him". Woodward says that he is in him, so when Nelec sees him next, Woodward will be watching too. Overmyer then proceeds to administer a toxin to Woodward, which then enters his bloodstream and kills him.

Then, Alice bangs on Joe's window and he lets her in. She then begins to tell him to not let Charles blow up his train because he shouldn't always get what he wants. She then goes on to say how she doesn't know Joe at all, even though it feels like she does. Joe, in shock at the entire conversation, agrees with Alice, before being cut off by his projector turning on, showing old family videos of him as a baby with his mum. As they both watch, Alice tells Joe that her dad was hungover, the day of the accident and that his mum was covering or his shift. She says she can tell that he wishes it was him, who died, not Joe's mum. Then, the white cube that Joe had taken from the train wreckage, started to vibrate. Out of nowhere, it flew off of his desk and through his wall, straight to the town's water tank.

When Alice arrives home, her drunken dad asks where she was. When she says that she should go to bed, he tells her to leave, just like her mum did. With that, Alice ran out of the house and begins to ride away. Her dad then drives to try to catch up with her. She then stops and turns around and her dad ends up crashing his car. When she stops, the creature takes her, leaving no trace.

Nelec orders Air Force officers to use flamethrowers to start wildfires outside of town, as part of Operation Walking Distance, which is an excuse to evacuate people.

At the camera store, Charles tells Joe that he ruined the movie. Joe says that he can get the camera back from his dad and they can still make the film festival. Charles then says that it was never about the movie, it was always about Alice. That's why Charles asked her to play a part in his movie because he likes her. While they're back at Joe's house, they watch the derailment footage and discover that a large creature escaped from one of the train's carriages. Just then, an evacuation siren goes off because of the wildfire that is uncontrollable.

As the boys leave the house, they are put into a military truck and taken to the Air Force's base. Once they're there, Alice's dad tells Joe that the creature took her. Joe then forms a plan to go back into town and rescue her.

The group convinces Jen, Charles' older sister, to pretend to hit on Donny in order to get him to drive them to their middle school.

While the boys are doing this, Jack attacks an Air Force officer, who is holding him in custody, and takes his uniform in order to fit in. To cause a diversion, he then blows up a truck holding flammable gas. Then he steals one of the military trucks and drives to the base,

When the boys get to the school, they break into Dr. Woodward's "dungeon", which is a trailer parked in the school's parking lot. After the break inside, they discover old videotapes and documents from Woodward's time as a government researcher. They then break into the school to use one of the classrooms to watch the footage on the tapes.

When they play the films, it's revealed that Woodward has been tracking the alien since 1958, when it crash-landed. The alien's species is predominantly subterranean and the Air Force had captured it and was running experiments on it. Woodward was one of the scientists experimenting on the ship, that the alien had been stripped of. The ship was composed of the white cubes that the train was transporting. At one point, the alien grabbed Woodward and establishing a psychic connection with him, through touch. Now understanding the alien, he wanted to rescue it and help it escape from Earth. Years later, he found out about the train and used the opportunity to help the creature.

The boys are then caught by Nelec and as they are taken back to base, the alien attacks their bus, tipping it over. The boys escape as the alien focuses on killing the Air Force officers.

Meanwhile, Jack made his way back to the base, where he learns, from Preston, about Joe's plan to rescue Alice. Jack and Alice's dad then agree to put aside their differences to save their kids.

Joe then drives Donny's car back into town, where the military is attempting to kill the alien but find their hardware goes haywire in its presence, resulting in significant collateral damage to the town. Martin's leg is broken in an explosion, so Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Cary head to the cemetery, where Joe had seen something digging up the ground. Inside the cemetery's garage, they find a massive tunnel leading to a maze of underground caverns.

In a chamber beneath the town's water tower, they find the alien has created a device from the town's stolen electronics, that it appears to be trying to fully activate, attached to the base of the tower. The alien also has several people, including Alice, hanging from the ceiling and unconscious, that it uses for food.



Using Cary's firecrackers as a distraction, Joe frees Alice and the others, but they end up trapped in a dead end cavern after the alien chases them down and dispatches the others. Alice and Cary scream and cower against the tunnel wall, but Joe steps forward and tries to talk to the alien. The alien grabs Joe, who quietly speaks to the alien, telling him over and over that "bad things happen" but that the alien "can still live". After studying Joe for a moment, and then hearing its device fully activating, the alien releases him and leave, allowing the three to return to the surface.

As Joe and Alice reunite with their dad's, everyone watches as numerous metal objects from all over town are pulled to the top of the water tower by an unknown force. The white cubes are also pulled in to assemble into the alien's spaceship, using the objects and the water tower as its base. As it nears completion, the alien enters the spaceship.



Joe's necklace is then drawn from out of his pocket towards the tower and after a brief moment, he decides to let it go, completing the ship. The water tank implodes and as the tower legs fall to the street, the ship rockets into space. Joe takes Alice's hand as they watch the ship depart into the night sky.

During the credits, the group's completed film, entitled The Case, is shown.

Starring Cast

 * Joel Courtney as Joseph "Joe" Francis Lamb
 * Elle Fanning as Alice "Ally" Dainard
 * Riley Griffiths as Charles Kaznyk
 * Ryan Lee as Cary McCarthy
 * Gabriel Basso as Martin Read
 * Zach Mills as Preston Scott
 * Kyle Chandler as Deputy Jackson "Jack" Lamb
 * Glynn Turman as Dr. Thomas Woodward