[yasr_overall_rating]
A father and son go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses special powers.
There’s a great deal going on in Jeff Nichol’s “Midnight Special,” plenty of drama, mystery, and intrigue, but for what purpose? I was grasping at straws trying to figure out why I so desperately wanted to like this film, and tried to convince myself that maybe it would marinate on the brain and then just BAM it’d knock me down with profound revelations but sadly no, just disappointment and a stake in the heart once the ending was revealed. With a promising start, and all the ingredients there to really take us higher, “Midnight Special,” simply deflates.
Anxiety is high as radio and television news reports make mention of a kidnapping of an 8 year old boy by two men, one of whom is Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) the boy’s biological father, and the other is Roy’s childhood friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton). Hiding out in a motel room, they quickly gather their essentials and vacate with the boy, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) who decked out in goggles reading comics under a bed sheet, coolly goes with the flow. They zip out into the deep; darkness is their ally.
While not everything is revealed to us, one thing is certain: the boy is special, possessing unique powers that are both frightening and telling. In the midst of midnight scramble out of the motel, we learn Roy, Lucas, and Alton have two forces after them, the Federal government and two men sent from “the Ranch,” the compound of a religious cult whose leader, Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard) believes Alton is the catalyst meant to bring forth the Day of Judgment. And Judgment Day is only a few days away. The FBI and NSA agent Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) are more concerned by the boy’s ability to uncloak highly encrypted transmissions. Everybody has his or her own interpretation of what the boy may be, and it’s never quite revealed what he is, other than obviously out of the ordinary. Is he friend or foe, savior or demon?
Hints as to what Alton may be are dropped all throughout the film, but it’s beside the point. The driving point of the film is a father (and eventually his mother) protecting his child by any means necessary and sacrificing his/her feelings for the greater good of Alton, and possibly more.
“Midnight Special,” calls upon us to use our imaginations, to fill in the blanks as we desire, and interpret what was left unsaid. In order to successfully do so, you have to care. And unfortunately, no matter how much I wanted to care, I did not. The film is tedious and it felt as if I were trying to watch it after taking a full dose of Nyquil. The car chases, the violent fits, the tidbits thrown here and there failed to move me and the ending, the moment you thought all this mental trudging would finally pay off, throws the final stone.
Michael Shannon is as intense as ever. Kirsten Dunst is both fragile and fearless as a mother who has one foot stuck in her past and one pulling her to the future. The acting is good. David Wingo’s score drives your focus and feeds your hope for more (by far the best element of the film). And the film is aesthetically pleasing, with a dazzling fluidity, cool and gritty. All the components for greatness are present, but it is as if subtlety and grandeur were forced into a marriage fraught with communication breakdowns and unattainable expectations.
In select theaters March 18th. Opens in Dallas April 1st
