Set in 1979 and the summer of “Alien” and “Breaking Away,” “Super 8” evokes a time before smartphones and YouTube, when making movies with your pals (inspired by the last five movies you saw at the two-screen theater out by the shopping center) took some effort, risked serious social isolation and constituted a high, rarefied calling.
It’s a good time, this movie — a critter picture conjoined with a coming-of-age picture. While its more obvious ’70s and ’80s influences (starting with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.,” and continuing on to the less vibrant realm of “The Goonies”) pack the frame very tightly, writer-director J.J. Abrams brings so much affection to the project the results reveal both the film geek he surely was as a Spielberg-lovin’ kid, and the hard-charging populist he has become.
With “Alias” and “Lost” on TV, and the “Star Trek” reboot on film, Abrams has proved himself a savvy combiner of existing genre elements. The same holds true for “Super 8,” which is set in a hilly Ohio steel town (filmed in Weirton, W.Va., where Michael Cimino filmed much of “The Deer Hunter”) that manages to look cozy yet somehow ripe for trouble. more