"Midnight Special" Review

Indie auteur Jeff Nichols (Mud, Shotgun Stories) makes the leap to studio filmmaking with Midnight Special, a bold, new sci-fi adventure that's a little bit Bonnie & Clyde crossed with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

In the film, Roy (Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are purported to be armed fugitives who have kidnapped a small boy. Turns out, that boy is Roy's son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), and Roy has stolen him away from a religious leader (Sam Shepard) who alienated Roy and adopted Alton as his own son. Roy and Alton once lived on a ranch in Texas run by this cult whose entire theology centers around Alton and his unique abilities. As Alton's health begins to deteriorate, the conflict becomes a race against time, federal authorities and religious fanatics who all want to exploit the boy for different purposes.

The film itself is deliberately paced but consistently engaging. Nichols' indie roots are felt throughout the production in the choices he makes with the narrative and the characters. Despite B-movie ingredients, this is a very intimate, grounded production which values human emotions and interactions over extraneous visual effects. It doesn't feel "slick" or polished like last year's indie sci-fi darling Ex Machina. Midnight Special feels gritty in the way Nichols' previous work has, but it never gets overbearingly dreary. Alton is the key to maintaining a subversive sense of childlike wonder and discovery for the audience, and both Nichols' direction and Lieberher's performance deliver on that despite the external forces bearing down on the protagonists.

The most distressing part of this whole production is that Shepard's character is underused, and one gets the sense that much of his role was relegated to the cutting room floor. How do you get Sam Shepard for your movie and then hardly use him? Hopefully he'll get his due diligence in the Blu-ray deleted scenes.

Some audiences may also find fault with the way the film ends. While it's refreshing that things aren't exactly tied up in a bow, the climax sees Nichols perhaps overplaying his hand with "the big reveal." If you saw 10 Cloverfield Lane, the payoff feels similar; not completely void of merit but perhaps a little more than necessary. As a whole, though, Midnight Special is a unique sci-fi adventure that's worth taking, especially for indie fans.

(F.Y.I. - Midnight Special is NOT based directly on the folk song, although a new cover version is used over the end credits.)

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