Stranger Things Fans Should Check Out This Movie That Did It Better
Strange goings-on in the late 1970s lead a band of middle-school boys (and their token girl) to uncover the alien conspiracy lurking in the midst of a sleepy American town. No, this is not Stranger Things, although nostalgia and emotional resonance abound.
Before the Netflix series came to define retro horror sci-fi, genre titans J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg teamed up to create a movie that hit many of the same notes that made Stranger Things so successful. With a modest domestic gross profit and muted, if generally favorable, critical reception, 2011’s Super 8 might have been a roadmap for the Duffer Brothers…but it should have also been a cautionary tale.
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Super 8 begins with a community rocked by tragedy: main character Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has just lost his mother in a factory accident that deeply affected the entire town. His father, Sheriff’s Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler), is also dealing with that fresh grief — and struggling to connect with his son in the wake of it. But the strange government lab that is also (for some reason) located in the town is about to provide adequate distraction for both father and son, in the form of an escaped alien. Deputy Jackson becomes absorbed in the strange canine and electrical phenomena causing a nuisance for the other townsfolk, while Joe experiences a Stephen-King-esque inciting incident that turns his friend group’s amateur film into real life sci-fi horror. Father and son follow their respective mysteries, but both paths lead back to the same alien — and lead them to each other, offering the prospect to heal from their bereavement.
The film that Joe and his friends are shooting is not incidental in
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