Midnight Special (2016)
Directed by Jeff Nichols
A father and son go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses special powers.
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55 films that influenced Midnight Special
What critics say influenced Midnight Special
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
Nichols taps into movie history, with touches of “Sugarland Express,” “Close Encounters,””E.T.” and most pointedly, “Starman,” for this pursuit picture.
It shares a fair bit of uncanny road-movie DNA with John Carpenter’s Starman, as well as the quiet mystery seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s early films.
There's an explicit nod, in particular, to John Carpenter's Starman, echoed even in the enveloping mood of David Wingo's driving electronic score.
It's also, in its own way, a wonderful melding of two different, but influential popular '70s filmmakers, drawing its blue-collar heroes and "Starman" otherworldliness from John Carpenter, its government agents and questing characters from "Close Encounters" and "E.T."
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
He wants to be Roy (or at least Claude Lacombe) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Nichols is obviously aiming for Spielberg, not just E.T. but Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Mixing the paranormal premise of “Firestarter” with the conspiracy-fueled paranoia of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the film has a cornucopia of good ideas and many shivery scenes, but never adds up to a completely convincing story.
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
Until then, however, “Midnight Special” is, despite its sometimes glacial pace, a tense, chilling ride that that also manages to be challenging and thought-provoking, with echoes of “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” turned on their head.
When 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), the boy everyone is after, is pursued by government agents, it recalls E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with the kid serving as a mixture of Elliott and E.T.
Other sci-fi films are nodded to here as well, including "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and, in fact, seeing Nichols as someone like Steven Spielberg but with a darker palette is not a bad reference point.
The film has been compared to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Starman, with a dash of E.T. thrown in as well, but unlike a lot of sci-fi movies, we’re not given a set of rules at the start to then serve as our guide into the narrative.
Combine “Close Encounter of the Third Kind,” with “E.T.” and a mix of the television series, “Fringe,” and you have the plot for Jeff Nichol’s film, “Midnight Special.”
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
It’s especially reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the scarier, government-experimentation bits of ET.
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
Comparisons have been made with Spielberg, and there are sprinkles of “The Sugarland Express,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “E.T.,” yet he and Nichols could not be more distinct in their emotional signatures.
The film has elements of Duel, E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind on the Spielberg front, with the mystery and wonder of the best Twilight Zones.
It would be irresponsible to divulge much more about Nichols' boldly envisioned new movie, which follows 2012's Mud (Matthew McConaughey as an escaped con, Tye Sheridan as the boy he befriends) and which calls to mind titles as divergent as the '70s road pic Vanishing Point, certain iconic Steven Spielberg efforts (no, not Jaws), and the just-out 10 Cloverfield Lane.
And at the risk of giving too much away, special mention must be made of the elaborate environment created for one stunning late scene by Alex McDowell, the British immersive design wizard known for his innovative work on Minority Report.
Possibly that something is very bad, which would not be too Spielbergian, War of the Worlds remake notwithstanding.
And it’s at least as solid a tribute to Steven Spielberg as J.J. Abrams’ uneven simulacrum Super 8, which reached for the same childlike combination of awe and uncertainty and had the advantage of the participation of Spielberg himself as a producer.
Other filmmakers, like J.J. Abrams with his muddled Super 8, have tried to evoke a Spielberg vibe and wound up ripping him off.
It will be unfashionable to think so, I’m sure, but that homage fabulist J.J. Abrams did this routine better in Super 8. Midnight Special is a pretty good film; its best moments thrum with mystery.
The influences of J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg are palpably felt in Midnight Special, particularly when Nichols harnesses the aura of the fantastic young Lieberher in the same manner as his predecessors did with their preteen leads in, respectively, Super 8 and E.T. Nichols lets his story develop naturally, with the themes of faith, family, and mankind’s place in the universe emerging fluidly amidst the backdrop of rural America.
As the story triangulates itself towards a climactic encounter in which the extent of Alton's true unearthliness is revealed perhaps a little too literally, echoes of Spielberg's Close Encounters or JJ Abrams's Super 8 start to jingle distantly.
J. J. Abrams’ Super 8 was an unreserved Amblin tribute, while Rian Johnson’s Looper riffed on early Cameron and Verhoeven.
In the Michael Shannon-fronted thriller “Shotgun Stories,” he focused on a fatal feud between half-brothers in rural Arkansas.
From his first feature, the powerful clan tragedy Shotgun Stories (2007), the writer-director Jeff Nichols has shown a knack for crafty storytelling and the occasional tendency to go off the rails for the big finale, especially in Take Shelter and his newest, most audience friendly film, Midnight Special.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols has done some of his best work with children (“Mud”) and Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter,” “Shotgun Stories”), and here, he recasts the veteran movie heavy as a boy’s hero.
With just a handful of films, the Little Rock, Arkansas, native has crafted his own busy little pocket of Southern Gothic, spilling over with feuding families (2007's Shotgun Stories), ordinary people touched with terrible prophecy (2011's Take Shelter), and the painful limits of self-aware mythologizing (2012's Mud).
A perfect batting average is as rare among directors as it is among baseball players, but Jeff Nichols continues the streak with his fourth feature, following “Shotgun Stories” (2007), “Take Shelter” (2011) and “Mud” (2012).
His first film, "Shotgun Stories," was a terrific study of violence and revenge; "Mud," his last picture, returned to those themes, but added evidence that he was good with young actors, and major stars.
‘Midnight Special,” from writer-director Jeff Nichols, evinces the same knack for melding realism and fantasy that the filmmaker brought to his breakout 2011 film “ Take Shelter .”
That was followed by “Take Shelter,” in which Shannon played a family man plagued by apocalyptic visions that threatened to not only destroy his marriage but also the world.
From his first feature, the powerful clan tragedy Shotgun Stories (2007), the writer-director Jeff Nichols has shown a knack for crafty storytelling and the occasional tendency to go off the rails for the big finale, especially in Take Shelter and his newest, most audience friendly film, Midnight Special.
Nichols is a fine filmmaker (Mud, Take Shelter) who has somehow been elevated to master status by his advocates.
A little boy with knowledge and powers beyond his years — actually, beyond his species — goes on the lam with his father in “Midnight Special,” a moody science-fiction thriller from writer-director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”).
Writer-director Jeff Nichols has done some of his best work with children (“Mud”) and Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter,” “Shotgun Stories”), and here, he recasts the veteran movie heavy as a boy’s hero.
Of course, most movies are written out beforehand, and shot out of order, and I don’t actually think writer/director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter; Mud) spent the rest of Midnight Special trying to recapture the glory of its opening.
Nichols and Shannon worked together again in Take Shelter, an eerie domestic tale with an apocalyptic edge, and in Mud , a modern, Huckleberry Finn-style boys’ adventure.
The mind-bending, gripping supernatural thriller Midnight Special is the fourth film from emerging American director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols, following Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and the Huckleberry Finn-influenced coming-of-age drama Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey.
Writer/director Jeff Nichols ( Mud , Take Shelter ) is a restrained storyteller who continues to hone his craft with each new project, and his Midnight Special is an absorbing tale filled to the brim with heart and soul.
But it’s not that much like any of them, nor, frankly, all that similar to Mud or Take Shelter, Nichols’ two previous movies.
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Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover of “Midnight Special” was featured in Twilight Zone: The Movie back in 1983.
But in a story that unfolds almost entirely on the road, there's a playful connection also to the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival cover, a Southern rock classic, which was used in the prologue and epilogue of 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, both featuring late-night driving scenes.
The scene is reminiscent of the opening of 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, where Albert Brooks is driving through the desert at night with Dan Aykroyd as his passenger.
The film shares its title with the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival song that featured prominently in Twilight Zone: The Movie, the underrated 1983 portmanteau movie that counted Spielberg among its four directors.
Or that he’s waxing nostalgic more generally — quoting the 1980s sci-fi he grew up on, like Joe Dante’s Explorers , Randal Kleiser’s Flight of the Navigator and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter .
The central story of a motley crew rescuing a supernatural outcast from the grasps of government forces recalls movies like “E.T.,” “Firestarter” and “Flight of the Navigator.”
If you, too, were a child during that era of Amblin and Flight of the Navigator and Cocoon, Nichols will simply make you feel like an adult who was happily raised on that stuff.
“Midnight Special” recalls the M. Night Shyamalan of “Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” which is to say back when he was good and seemed interested in the idea that the people who understand the most about the world are often dismissed as crazy.
Midnight Special‘s spiritual predecessor is the M. Night Shyamalan film Unbreakable, where Bruce Willis discovers he can’t be hurt and Samuel L. Jackson is the polar opposite of that.
Opening with a child abduction and ending with a spectacular sci-fi finale on par with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the Bible Belt-spanning “ Midnight Special ” demonstrates once and for all that indie auteur Jeff Nichols is now the go-to storyteller for the kind of slow-burn supernatural thrill audiences once sought from M. Night Shyamalan — that is, before the “Sixth Sense” director went off the deep end with “Lady in the Water.”
The film revs across the screen with the kinetic vibe that made “Vanishing Point” a drive-in hit of the 1970s.
It would be irresponsible to divulge much more about Nichols' boldly envisioned new movie, which follows 2012's Mud (Matthew McConaughey as an escaped con, Tye Sheridan as the boy he befriends) and which calls to mind titles as divergent as the '70s road pic Vanishing Point, certain iconic Steven Spielberg efforts (no, not Jaws), and the just-out 10 Cloverfield Lane.
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It’s not only him who looms over Midnight Special; there are also strong echoes of Disney’s Witch Mountain adventures – Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978) – as well as John Carpenter’s bewitching Starman (1984).
If it sounds something like a high-falootin’ version of Escape to Witch Mountain, it sort of is but as with most Nichols films, an overview of the plot doesn’t do justice to the experience of the movie even in a more traditional adventure thriller.
It’s not only him who looms over Midnight Special; there are also strong echoes of Disney’s Witch Mountain adventures – Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978) – as well as John Carpenter’s bewitching Starman (1984).
Or that he’s waxing nostalgic more generally — quoting the 1980s sci-fi he grew up on, like Joe Dante’s Explorers , Randal Kleiser’s Flight of the Navigator and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter .
Youth activists resemble the media-saturated aliens of Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985), who pick up radio and TV signals as if comprehending human history.