In cinemas April 8th!
A mystery is a fragile thing, ultimately I think it’s strength depends largely on the pay off. Is it satisfyingly surprising but meaningful? Does it effect our understanding of the story in a way that moves us? 'Midnight Special' is balanced very precariously on this line as the film is very much a mystery, and said mystery is interesting and the pay off makes sense and is ultimately satisfying to the story, but we seem to be stuck with an array of uninteresting characters doing uninteresting things.
The film concerns a young boy named Alton (Jaden Lieberher) who has been kidnapped from a religious cult group whose name I don’t immediately remember but it doesn’t really matter anyway so I’ll be as dismissive of them as the film is. Turns out his kidnapper is his father (Michael Shannon), that’s not a spoiler it happens early, and the boy has mysterious powers that have caused the cult to view him as some kind of messiah.
The film concerns a young boy named Alton (Jaden Lieberher) who has been kidnapped from a religious cult group whose name I don’t immediately remember but it doesn’t really matter anyway so I’ll be as dismissive of them as the film is. Turns out his kidnapper is his father (Michael Shannon), that’s not a spoiler it happens early, and the boy has mysterious powers that have caused the cult to view him as some kind of messiah.
Said powers include the ability to unwittingly receive and transmit radio frequencies, imbue others with “holy” visions through direct eye contact and an extreme aversion to sunlight. So he’s not exactly Superman but it’s interesting, and somewhere along the line he has been picking up military or CIA frequencies of some significance that’s never fully explained and he’s specifically focused on a particular time and place that the cult have come to assume signifies judgement day. His father, tired of the cults BS, is determined to take Alton to the location at the time and see what’s what once and for all.
A chase movie occurs with Alton, his father, his fathers friend (Joel Edgerton) and eventually his mother (Kirsten Dunst) because the movie suddenly realised it needed a woman in it, trying to outrun the military, an NSA analyst (Adam Driver), and the cult who want them back so they will be spared the judgement. Unfortunately it’s not entirely clear why any of this matters. The cult are arguably the most interesting angle but they get unceremoniously thrown away after the military rounds them all up in the first ten minutes and besides a couple of reluctant hitmen they’ve sent out to track Alton they never reappear again and even those two don’t affect the third act in any significant way.
A chase movie occurs with Alton, his father, his fathers friend (Joel Edgerton) and eventually his mother (Kirsten Dunst) because the movie suddenly realised it needed a woman in it, trying to outrun the military, an NSA analyst (Adam Driver), and the cult who want them back so they will be spared the judgement. Unfortunately it’s not entirely clear why any of this matters. The cult are arguably the most interesting angle but they get unceremoniously thrown away after the military rounds them all up in the first ten minutes and besides a couple of reluctant hitmen they’ve sent out to track Alton they never reappear again and even those two don’t affect the third act in any significant way.
The film employs the idea that keeping things sort of vague nurtures intrigue and whilst it drip feeds us just enough information to hold an audience all the way to the end anything that isn’t Alton learning to use his powers doesn’t seem to fit in. For example at one point we cut to NSA analyst Kylo Ren dramatically solving a problem we didn’t even know he was having, unravelling the tangle of numerical information Alton has apparently been feeding the cult to determine the location he is trying to get to for no reason beyond that Alton and his gang had gone into hiding and the movie needed to chase to start up again. We honestly didn’t even know he hadn’t worked this out yet, it comes a little out of nowhere.
So the tension of the chase never quite kicks in and there’s a lot of superfluous characters cluttering up the story but the mystery is engaging and the climax, whilst not answering all our questions, does feel satisfying within the relative small scale of the characters world.
So the tension of the chase never quite kicks in and there’s a lot of superfluous characters cluttering up the story but the mystery is engaging and the climax, whilst not answering all our questions, does feel satisfying within the relative small scale of the characters world.
The effects sequences are superb, all at once being subtle and epic. If you’re expecting small scale indie film quality in this regard you’ll be quickly surprised, we very early realise that there’s some real hocus pocus going down here and nobody is prepared for it. That’s really the point of the film, Alton’s father and mother in over their heads trying to do their best for the son they’ve no hope of understanding. There’s a much larger even cosmic series of events playing out in the background and seeing it from the perspective of two desperate parents trying just to do the right thing makes for some interesting drama and I found the films vague attempts to be a thriller or action movie just got in the way.
Review by Kristian Mitchell-Dolby.
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