t's 1979 and Joe Lamb's life hasn't been going very well. The quiet 13-year-old recently lost his mom to an accident at the local steel mill. Four months later, her absence is an overwhelming loss that emotionally amounts to a daily gut punch.

Joe's dad, the town's deputy sheriff, isn't much help. Their relationship never was all that great, and now it's virtually nonexistent. Other than occasional nods in each other's direction, their only real discussion lately was about Dad's plan to get rid of Joe for the summer by sending him to baseball camp. Not a promising prospect as far as the younger Lamb is concerned.

The one thing that he is kind of looking forward to is helping out with his pal Charles' film. With a handful of friends they're shooting a homemade Super 8mm zombie flick that they hope will make it into a local film contest. Even cooler is the fact that Charles convinced Alice Dainard to play the female lead.

As far as Joe's concerned, Alice is the prettiest girl—and soon to be cutest zombie—in all of Lillian, Ohio. She made the whole crew nearly cry when she practiced Charles' script. And for some reason she doesn't mind talking to an insignificant middle school nobody like Joe. Things just might be looking up.

But then, while the kids are filming a scene at the train depot, a guy drives his pickup directly into an oncoming freight. The massive wreck nearly kills them all.

The terrified kids haven't got a clue what's just happened. But their little Super 8 holds evidence. When they ran for their lives, it kept filming. And amidst the wreckage it spotted something very creepy. Something that no one outside of a place called Area 51 was ever supposed to see. A scary something that's about to change everything in young Joe Lamb's life.

:: Review

It's really hard not to compare writer/director J.J. Abrams' new sci-fi flick to some of Steven Spielberg's old hits from the past. (Spielberg produced Super 8.) From an action perspective it feels very much like an homage to the likes of E.T. and Jurassic Park, with just enough Dharma Initiative reel-to-reel mystery thrown in to give things that patented Abrams vibe.

The production values are top-notch. The young heroes are believable and endearing (particularly in the case of star Elle Fanning, who plays Alice). And the story isn't all about blowing stuff up. (Just mostly!) We do see some family-reconciliation heart emerge amid the creature-feature chills.

So the violence goes a little crazy at times. The kids aren't exactly model citizens. And the military (quite unnecessarily) takes it on the chin. But leaving the screening after the credits rolled, I still couldn't help feeling that Super 8could've and should've been this summer's picture to beat. Except for one thing: It really doesn't seem to want to be the summer flick to beat.

This may be a movie full of kids. And this may be a production with a kid's sense of moviemaking wonder. But Abrams pumped his script up with so much profanity—much of it jumping out of the kids' mouths—that he sends a possibly unintentional but still crystal clear message to families: Don't even try to find out what's inside that train!

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