I’ve been complaining for a while that movies are too beholden to the sci-fi/fantasy/comic-book tastes that seem to be overpowering films about real people. Well, “Cloverfield Lane” and especially “Midnight Special” show you can get around that problem by making a sci-fi film that would play just as well at the Toronto Film Festival as it would Comic-Con.
What Works: Director Jeff Nichols has never made a bad movie, and this film continues in the tradition the underrated “Take Shelter” and “Mud” started. He’s once again paired up with the great Michael Shannon, along with new faces Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, as well as their regular co-star Sam Shepard in a cameo role as a fundamentalist leader (it’s never called a cult, but they sure like guns on this ranch of his) who wants Shannon’s son almost as much as the government does. The boy has special abilities that lead some to think he’s a threat and others a savior. All Shannon knows is that he has to get his son to a specific place.
I won’t even think about spoiling exactly what the boy is or what’s waiting for him at that location. Needless to say, it surprised me in a great way. The movie is made with technical skill that is apparent from the first scene—love the shot of the car’s headlights going off as the night vision goggles turn on to drive in the dark—and only grows more obvious as the fairly-realistic special effects show up.
What Doesn’t: Are Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgerton, and especially Adam Driver as good an actor as Michael Shannon is? No, no they aren’t. Although Edgerton is moving up in the world with strong work here, “The Gift,” and “Black Mass” and Dunst is on a resurgence after “Fargo,” I’ll admit that if Driver has any tricks up his sleeve we haven’t seen, he might want to use them soon. And there are occasional scenes of this movie that are a little too stilted and emotionless, although the finale makes up for it.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Although it feels like a lot of the muted scenes are intentional, it might have been nice to add a little more of the personality and flavor Nichols did in his previous movies. I know this is a deliberate choice, it’s just not my personal preference. Still, this is a really good movie that people should absolutely watch.