Midnight Special

Whenever I hear the phrase midnight special, usually one of two things comes to mind: I’m either thinking of the what I’m going to be ordering and slowly killing myself with at the Jack in the Box drive thru or I’m running through all of the options the local pimp on my street corner shouts out to me on a Sunday night. Either way, neither option really takes into consideration my long term health. Thankfully though gentrification and my desire to stay alive have rid me of the latter but every now and then the former peaks its awful head up and leaves me looking like the Gerber baby when I wake up in the morning.

Well after seeing the latest offering from Jeff Nichols, the director or Take Shelter and Mud last Monday night, I now have something better to think about whenever those lovely words pop into my head. Midnight Special allows Nichols to once again team up with the uber talented yet super creepy Michael Shannon. I kept waiting to see who would finally take Sean Penn’s place for that specific role in Hollywood and it looks as though Shannon has decided to step up to the plate. He’s perfect as the misunderstood do-gooder who is trying his best to live out his moral code even if it make everyone else around him supremely uncomfortable in the process. And his latest role in this wonderful movie follows this trend to the tee.

Special is a movie about the abduction of a mysterious young boy named Alton. Now when you first meet him he appears to be your normal run of the mill kid as he simply sits in the back of the car reading his comic books and respectfully listens to the commands of his father (Shannon) but as you notice his reactions to his environment, you soon learn that there is nothing remotely normal about this boy.

Alton wears swimming goggles 90’s of the time, he and his "captures" seemingly only move at night, and he somehow has the ability to speak in what is considered to be tongues and other languages without ever being taught them. And it’s because of his uniqueness that everyone is trying to get their hands on him.

This local religious compound, that Shannon has broken him free of, believes that he is the Messiah as he has provided them with visions and words that they use as a basis for their sermons. The government (led by Adam Driver) is after him because they want to try and understand him and Shannon and his partner Joel Edgerton are trying to get him to a specific location by a certain date because of something he must do there. And all three parties will stop at nothing to get what they want. Someone has alerted the police of his disappearance but for some reason they can never produce a photo of him.

Is he the Messiah or is he really just a kid? This, along with E-Machina, is one of the more suspenseful sci-fi films to come out in quite some time. While it’s not as cerebral as Machina is, it certainly is one of the more mind bending experiences you’ll have at the theater. Every time you think you have it figured out, another WTF moment happens and it completely throws you off. But once they reveal what it is actually happening, it sort of takes away from the big bang at the end.

That doesn’t mean however that the ending is disappointing; there’s still plenty of action that takes place that will keep you on the edge of your seat, it’s just that you kind of hoped that Nichols had yet another gear in him to make this an instant classic. If the third act had continued to build on the suspense the first two acts had set up, I would have given it a rating of tight but as it stands it only gets a rating of very FRESH!