Midnight Special

Synopsis: A father, Roy (Michael Shannon) and his son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) flee a cult while the FBI intervene to prevent a potential tragedy.

Given the quality of writer-director Jeff Nichol’s short but highly impressive C.V. (Shotgun Stories, 2007, Take Shelter, 2011, and Mud, 2012) and especially as his latest film arrives on our shores garlanded with critical praise, Midnight Special, is a sizeable disappointment. 

Like its forebears it is set in the rural South of the US and deals with characters in extremis, Nichols’ regular collaborator Michael Shannon returns to the lead after having taken a back seat to Matthew McConaughy in Mud, and the same film-making skill is in evidence. Despite this it feels like somewhere along the line a few cans of film got lost but the makers decided to go ahead and put together something anyway hoping that no-one would notice or mind, a strategy which given the glowing reviews Stateside, apparently has worked. While the bare bones of the story are there, the film never reconciles its surface action with its underlying logic. We can accept that Alton’s special powers defy everyday reality but not the absence of coherent narrative motivation for the various characters preoccupied with him.

Thus, the film starts with Roy and his good friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton), on the run from a cult led by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard, who had also been in Mud) which in turn is under investigation by the FBI, as apparently Meyer has been quoting classified information in his sermons and buying guns. Why they do either of these things, other than as generic cult behaviour, we are not told.  Why Lucas, a state trooper, is so deeply involved in the kidnapping is barely explained later in the film but what the cult sees in Alton is never made apparent as all he seems to do is to act as a relay for satellite messages which they repeat like a mantra.  That, and project bone-shaking beams of light from his eyes. Impressive but hardly the stuff of the new Messiah.  And don’t ask me why the FBI don’t confiscate the cult’s guns, except, of course, to allow a couple of their members to use them later in the film in pursuit of Roy and the child (Shepard and the rest of the cult effectively disappear after the establishing set-up). Why Alton was taken from Roy and Sarah, his mother (Kirsten Dunst) is not explained.  The nub of the matter seems to be that the cult expects the Apocalypse in a few days time and believes that those who are with Alton will be saved. For some reason Roy thinks Alton needs to be in a specific location at this time and this is the purpose of the abduction. But when the day comes, a hugely elaborate structure that looks like it could have been taken from Elysium, descends and retrieves Alton who apparently is one of “them”. There is no Apocalypse, Rapture or any explanation, as with the sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still,,as to what was the purpose of Alton's extra-terrestrial visitation, or for that matter, how he was incarnated via Roy and Sarah, immaculately or otherwise).  And one can’t help but wonder, given his extraordinary powers, would a pair of swimming goggles really protect Alton’s eyes from the sunlight?  

Nichols took on similar subject-matter with much greater credibility in Take Shelter. Shannon who played the lead in that film with his characteristic dour and intractable phlegmatism is again very good as the devoted father, as is Edgerton as his loyal friend and there is a compelling dynamic at work when they are on screen.  But Dunst has little to do and Adam Driver who looks like he would be more at home checking his Facebook page in a Manhattan coffee shop is miscast as a special investigator. Lieberher acquits himself well but is very much a generic Spielbergian movie child.

Nichols and his team, which include regular cinematographer Adam Stone and composer David Wingo have crafted a film which reproduces many of the hallmarks of its predecessors and in this respect one feels quite guilty in finding fault with it. That perhaps goes some way Io explaining the glowing Stateside reviews. I’m not saying that the emperor has no clothes but I definitely think he has forgotten his undergarments.

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