In the summer of 1979, 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. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth - something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.
Reviews
The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
“The reason this film will inspire and endure s that it makes you car about the characters, believe in their milieu and share in their anxieties and excitement”
05/08/2011
Read Full Review
Total Film
Jamie Graham
“A monster mash-up of '50s sci-fi, late-'70s / early '80s event movie and autobiography, Super 8 doesn’t possess the top-to-bottom greatness of the films it’s modelled on but, in shooting for the stars, leaves 90% of modern blockbusters in the gutter.”
06/01/2011
Read Full Review
The Times
Kate Muir
“I took an 11-year-old to the screening, and her body language said it all: she squirmed in fear, peaked out through her fingers, snorted with laughter and jumped in shock.”
05/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
“Maybe Super 8 doesn’t quite have the wow factor of the early Spielberg films it sets out to emulate, but make no mistake, this is an exciting and lovable work of sci-fi adventure, mixed with a coming-of-age saga that is truly touching. ”
07/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Observer
Philip French
“Nothing in the latter part of Super 8 matches the first 40 minutes, but the suspense is well sustained and the performances are attractive”
01/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Sukhuv Sandhu
“Abrams has created a clever, enjoyably reverential, and very entertaining update of an old-fashioned boy’s-own caper”
04/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“The film's charm doesn't last the distance. You can virtually pinpoint the scene from which it starts to decline into formulaic, FX-driven setpieces. Abrams has nerve as well as talent, but not enough of either to resist the gravitational pull of box-office numbers”
05/08/2011
Read Full Review
Empire Magazine
Ian Nathan
“Where Spielberg mingled the extraordinary with a verifiable suburbia, Abrams works at one remove, locating the extraordinary in Spielbergia. The magic comes lovingly pre-packaged. Idealised. We obediently bask in its glow, but nothing startles us... a beautifully made homage to better times, and better movies. ”
10/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Evening Standard
David Sexton
“What came originally straight from Spielberg's heart is here an acquired language, and for all the gloss and expertise that shows, the film even becomes a bit dull, a touch formulaic, two-thirds of the way through.”
08/05/2011
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“Thrilling, fatuous, pyrotechnical, whimsical, barnstorming, batty, out there, out to lunch and finally, though it flails exuberantly to the last frame, out of ideas”
04/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“The geekery has charm, but is a little self-conscious and just occasionally, this movie resembles an open-ended, rambling drama serial that gets a little, well, lost.”
08/04/2011
Read Full Review
The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“It's one thing for a writer-director to make a nostalgic film about his childhood, but it's another to make a nostalgic film about the way someone else has represented childhood already”
07/08/2011
Read Full Review
The Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Duran
“Abrams has made something more in that director's style than his own, an action that has diminished his own effectiveness without replicating what makes the best of Spielberg's films so successful”
09/06/2011
Read Full Review
The New York Times
A. O. Scott
“Super 8 lacks... a sense of improvisation, of risk, of the wild and giddy rush that accompanies the decision to pay tribute to the movies you love by going out and making one yourself. It gives us everything we want, except awe, amazement and a feeling of discovery.”
09/06/2011
Read Full Review
Time Out
Tom Huddleston
“But as the plot contrivances pile up, Abrams finds it impossible to maintain either the quality or the tension. The humour descends from snappy, believable banter to broad ‘Goonies’-style slapstick – kids shrieking and falling over – while the emotional scenes plummet from the wonderfully terse, tight-lipped tragedy of the prologue to pure, manipulative schmaltz. ”
08/04/2011
Read Full Review
Sight & Sound
Henry K Miller
“A Spielberg pastiche of uncanny precision and sublime pointlessness.”
01/09/2011
Read Full Review