Review of Midnight Special (2016) by Eddie G — 09 Apr 2016

This is a review of the reviews. Which fail.

Beware that nobody gets the plot right. The basic mechanism of the plot goes missing. It's like they saw "Memento" and didn't grok that the guy has a memory problem. No one gets it that this is not a movie about a kid who has supernatural powers. Not one professional reviewer gets the central plot mechanism. Same for audience. The comments are loopy:

-- Poor storyline, a film that made no sense in any shape or form.

-- Midnight Special is supernatural, soulful and spiritual sci-fi...

-- The movie never does its audience the courtesy of explaining why the h--- (heck) (or how) all this stuff happens - even in the end!

-- ...at the core of it all is a very human story.

It's sort of a mix between 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters'...

-- A kid with powers...

-- ...ridiculous irrelevant follow-up.

-- This must have been the thinnest script in history.

-- ...another solid human drama film,.

-- ...a sweet movie with a great message.

-- The core driver of the film is the relationship between Roy and Alton.

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"Midnight Special" is a time travel movie. Also an exploration of Free Will and what its loss might look like.

Basic plot: one of the light/energy creatures from the future, the city with the fancy buildings, has jumped back in time and taken up residence in the "Alton" character. That relationship has its problems. Lots of them.

The kid does not have supernatural powers. All that comes from the light/energy creature who is from an evolved human, coming from many millions of years in the future. (Something like a robotic/artificial evolution is the sci-fi tool here. See Spielberg's "A.I." for another example.

Not one of the central human characters understands what is happening, ever. Not one scene. Not one word. Not one emotion, which are enhanced by permanent manipulations.

The light/energy creature manipulates them. This is evident with the father, highway patrolman, cult members, cult leader, mother, government experts in a group, the interviewer, and the two would-be kidnappers. The light/energy creature manipulates their emotions and their goals pretty much at will.

It is possible that the interviewer character dopes out the basic facts of the story line. He does not get the light-from-eyes treatment. Possibly he sees through the manipulations of humans by the point where he sits down with the highway patrolman at the final scene. Otherwise every scene, every character, every word, every action is manipulated (and often imperfectly) by the central light/energy character. "Midnight Special: The Fog" or "Fog of War" might have prepared the audience for what happens.

But dope everything out for you ??? Make it easy? No-no-no. Imagining that "Alton" has supernatural powers at the start takes the audience off on the wrong road -- from which it is quite the challenge to adjust to the time travel structure, the manipulations, the loss of Free Will with no awareness that that's what is happening. Brilliantly done, btw..

The light/energy character gets to go home. A portal is opened back to the future. Early 21st Century America has been investigated. A.O.K. Impact on humans? Irrelevant.