Review of Midnight Special (2016) by Bobbylikesmovie — 23 Mar 2017

Earlier in 2016, I saw Midnight Special and it was okay. This movie was considered as a heart-warming science fiction tale about a father protecting his son who has strange powers. I feel like the heart in this movie was handled well. The performances were pretty well acted and added a lot of depth especially Michael Shannon’s. And it is told pretty nicely through well-handled cinematography. Almost everything is well-handled in this movie but the plot and the film editing suck. Let me explain:

The Film Editing: There is one action scene in particular that is cut with too many takes. That scene felt very loose and very poorly edited. Most likely the director is not familiar on how to shoot action scenes. Jeff Nichols, the director, has had his fair share of interesting more dramatic movies (i.e Loving) proof that he is not familiar with action scenes. Film editing is an integral part of a science fiction film and having this quality screwed up is very poor for the movie. A lot of the CGI scenes look poorly edited and laughable. The scenes with the son are more laughable. But all in all, the film editing was pretty bad but basically: it did not look real. The Plot!!!!: The plot is does not ground itself as something very important or serious. There is a substantial amount of scenes that show heart and love, but nothing really grounds itself as something significant or impactful. Everything feels very low in scale. It lacks significance. This plot needs more enlightening or more seriousness. The scope or the lengths that the story wants to take does not match how drab the plot is. It makes the whole concept of the movie unimportant. In addition, the whole theme about love seems dull and unimportant. It makes the film pointless when you have a dull theme and a drab plot. It cannot manage to grab the audience’s attention. It wants to be something powerful, but it falls flat on its face. In actuality, it makes the movie seem very T.V movie-ish.

However, the scope and the performances are all well-handled. I think the problem is that although Jeff Nichols has a passion for the subject, he does not have the talent to create competent movie on this subject. It is very well-handled, but the director cannot manage to create an experience that is memorable and powerful as much as he wants to. I really wanted to give this movie a 7/10, but there were just a lot of problems. So I gave it a 5/10 meaning it was an okay experience or a mediocre experience. This is a very polarizing movie so you can probably enjoy it or not. But this movie is smack dab in the middle for me.