Super 1, Super 2, Super 3...SUPER 8!!!!

     Set in summer 1979, Super 8 has a fitting title.  It tells the story of a group of boys making a zombie movie and getting a real-life supernatural experience.  The movie begins with the main character, Joe Lamb (a heartfelt performance by newcomer Joel Courtney) grieving over his mother's death in a mill accident.  Flash forward four months and it's summer, and Joe's best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) is making a movie, along with Joe and three of their friends. Charles also manages to gets older, cute girl Alice (played by passionate Elle Fanning) to act in the movie.  

     During a midnight film session at a train station, the movie-makers witness an Air Force train crash into a truck driving the opposite direction on the tracks.  The group escapes scared, but unharmed.

     The next day is pandemonium.  People and dogs go missing.  Cars get destroyed.  The Air Force comes to clean up the mess from the train crash, but won't tell anyone what's going on.

     Joe becomes the leader in trying to solve this mystery.  He has a piece of evidence from the crash, and, amazingly, Charles' film from the night of the crash is unharmed and usable.  Director J.J. Abrams does an excellent job of creating Super 8's air of mystery and excitement, but the plot's proportions are off.  The mystery is solved all at once, instead of through finding evidence and information little by little and then figuring out its significance.  Some questions are never answered. And the climax is too short compared to the suspenseful mystery part of the movie.

    Despite Super 8's cozy, small-town Ohio setting and nostalgic movie-making, you never quite get comfortable, always expecting another shock to make you jump in your seat and gasp out loud.