Writer/director Jeff Nichols creates a film with grounded, realistic characters in a world on the edge of the fantastic and paranormal. Find out more in our review.

Midnight Special begins its story with two men, Roy Tomlyn (played by Man of Steel’s Michael Shannon) and his old friend, a highway trooper names Lucas (Joel Edgerton) who have kidnapped a child named Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher). The two men are determined, but, at the same, desperate; desperate to save this child and to avoid capture. The media mentions curious little about the missing boy, only a general description given in an amber alert, and the audience is left to assemble what is happening. We learn that the boy was being raised by a sect led by Calvin Meyer (played by veteran actor Sam Shepard) and that Roy is the boy’s father. A father needing to save his son at all costs, even when splinter members of Meyer’s sect and even the U.S. Government is out to stop them from reaching their point of safety.

To reveal more about the plot would be deprive the viewer of the layered world-building Nichols provides in his 4th feature. Midnight Special is a throwback in many ways. It is reminiscent of films like 1984’s Firestarter, Starman, 1985’s D.A.R.Y.L., and 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Films where ordinary people are thrown into unparalled and extraordinary circumstances on behalf of something unknown yet familiar. There’s something about Alton, and even if Roy, Lucas, and Alton’s mother, Sarah, a former sect member played by Kirsten Dunst, don’t know exactly what it is, they know they have to help him. Not just out of love, but because it is the right thing to do.

Midnight Special shines due to strong supporting performances that ground this film in reality despite a strong genre element that drives the story. Not unlike M. Night Shymalan’s Unbreakable, Midnight Special takes place in a world where the supernatural and fantastic are foreign, but one where Alton reads 1980’s George Perez & Marv Wolfman era Teen Titans comic books and asks his father what Kryptonite is when reading a Superman comic book. The film is in many ways a myth or folk fable. Sam Shepard plays Calvin Meyer not as Jim Jones style cult figurehead, but as a layered and reserved community leader with a quiet charisma, not unlike John Hawkes’ layered performance as Patrick in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Adam Driver delivers a very strong performance as an NSA researcher named Paul Sevier, who becomes obsessed with uncovering where Roy, Lucas, and Sarah are going with Alton and what their story really is.

Midnight Special is an intriguing and engrossing film; one that hearkens back to science fiction and fantasy films of the past, while at the same time presenting a grounded realistic performance from the principals involved. Much like last year’s It Follows, its refreshing to see original and intelligent genre fare returning to the big screen that respects its audience and entertains them at the same time.

Midnight Special opens exclusively at Harkins Camelview in Scottsdale on Friday April 1st