Midnight Special

Evening in a motel room somewhere in Texas. Two men are preparing to leave, taking down the bits of cardboard which they have taped, for some reason, all over the windows. The TV shows a news report about an abducted boy. The boy sits in a corner of the room under a bedsheet, wearing blue swimming goggles and ear defenders. We will work out later that one of the men, (Michael Shannon) is his father, and is escaping with him from a cult. The men take the boy outside to where their car is waiting, and drive off, but the desk clerk has recognised them. Listening to police radio channels, they realise the cops are onto them. They pull off the freeway onto country roads. Night has fallen. The driver puts on night vision goggles, switches off all the car's lights, and accelerates into the dark.

So begins Jeff Nichols's Midnight Special, a film which I missed completely on its release, and only stumbled across recently on Amazon Prime. I had no idea what it was about, but right from that opening sequence you can tell that it's something, well, special.

In fact, it's probably best to come at it knowing as little as possible, since it makes some very effective gear-changes, starting out like a thriller, turning into spooky-child sci-fi, and then into something else again. In plot terms it's pure hokum: a little bit Close Encounters, a little bit E.T (though are no extra terrestrials in it, exactly), but it's quieter and stranger than a Spielberg film. It starts in media res and ends without explanation. The pace is relentless, but the mood is melancholy, all flat landscapes and muted colours. The cast is great - Michael Shannon, Joel Egerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Sam Shephard. Jaeden Leibeher is excellent as the boy. Bill Camp does wonderful things with a small role as the reluctant amateur heavy sent out by the cult to retrieve the missing boy. "What do I know about something like this?" he wonders dolefully, nerving himself up to go and threaten a witness. "Sometimes we are asked to do things which are beyond us." There is a superbly clumsy and un-glamorous fight/shoot-out. It all feels very real - stumbling conversations, grotty motel rooms and gas stations - which gives the fantasy elements more power than they would have in a glossier setting.

I hadn't seen any of Jeff Nichols's films before, but I'm going to seek out all of them now.

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