With the third Mission: Impossible and his stellar Star Trek reboot, J.J. Abrams proved to be extremely gifted at making J.J. Abrams movies. Super 8, however, shows that he's not so good at making Steven Spielberg films.
A Frankenstein's monster of movie memories, Super 8 delivers a predictable kids-and-creature feature that's genetically engineered by Abrams to recall a handful of films you loved growing up -- most of which bore executive producer Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment logo. But in a rare case of reverse nostalgia, the incessant nods Abrams makes to other beloved movies prevent you from ever falling in love with Super 8 on its own.
In a nondescript Ohio town, a family tragedy leaves quietly artistic Joe (Joel Courtney) and his stoic father, Jackson (Kyle Chandler), on opposite sides of an emotional chasm. Dad disapproves of Joe's friends; six middle-schoolers on break for the summer who commit to filming portly Charles's (Riley Griffiths) homegrown zombie movie. But while recording one night near the town's train stop, a pick-up truck driven by the middle school's science teacher purposefully rams a speeding train, causing a massive pile up that unleashes the locomotive's alien cargo.
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