Super 8 finds conflict with a hostile military invading a gentle populace. But everything has a disguise so it’s like the army’s trying to clean up a stupendous train wreck while fathers are trying to shield their own children from demons they’ve created to protect them. This is J.J. Abrams territory so while we’ve seen the trailer for months that suggests Area 51 alien shenanigans, we still get a fully realized movie that tips a hat to the teaser while also fleshing out an actual movie.

Set in the late 70s, Super 8 conjures up all sorts of movies: The Goonies mixed with 50s sci-fi where aliens invade Earth. Only in this day and age we’ve been acclimated to the possibility that aliens are benevolent and mankind is malicious. A group of well-defined kids are making a movie with super-8 equipment so common to the era. While filming they witness a catastrophe so huge that the entire town is cordoned off. All throughout Super 8 we get alternate signals; one telling us this is a straight forward mystery thriller and another demarcating a kind of homage to places and things that came before.

A third act labyrinth took me back to the 50s Invaders From Mars. Overall I saw more Joe Dante influence than Spielberg (Super 8’s producer) although that’s a thin red line.

Okay, here’s the kicker; when the film wraps but before the credit roll about 200 out of 250 people in the audience bolt for the door because they have to use the bathroom or they have to hop in their cars to sit in traffic with everyone else trying to get out of the parking garage. The credits are noticeably on the right side of the screen, then several second into the roll, on the left hand side of the screen the movie (within the movie) that the kids have been working during the film unwinds, and all the exiting crawdads are standing agape watching the sequence and basically blocking the passage way out of the theater. Isn’t this against the fire code? All the people in their seats, who are like still sitting there and still grooving on the above average film, are now craning their necks to see over the bodies of the thumbsuckers who are now obscuring the screen. Super 8 is a film for moron and maven alike.

- Michael Bergeron