Super 8

After witnessing a mysterious train crash, a group of friends in the summer of 1979 begin noticing strange happenings going around in their small town, and begin to investigate into the creepy phenomenon.



The movie is about the strange encounter that Joe Lamb, a 14-year-old boy living in the fictional town of Lillian, and his group of friends when they are filming low budget zombie movie on Super 8 film. It all begins when Joe's best friend Charles Kaznyk wants to make a film to enter a film competition. Charles manages to convince Aliceto be the protagonist's wife in his low budget zombie movie. Joe is the make-up and special effects specialist for the movie, while his other three friends (Preston, Martin and Cary) are the actors, and lighting specialist.

Alice steals her father's car and takes the group to an old train depot where Charles want to film a scene. During the shoot, Joe witnesses a pick-up truck driving onto the tracks, placing itself in the path of an oncoming train. This causes a massive derailment with explosions and flying debris from the train.

In the aftermath of the accident, the group find the area littered with strange white cubes. When they approach the truck, they discover that the driver is Dr. Woodward, their biology teacher. He warns them to never talk about what they saw; otherwise, they and their family will be silence, he yells at them to run. Soon after, the U.S. Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec, arrives to secure the crash site as the kids make their escape.

Over the next couple of days, strange phenomena occur: numerous town dogs have run away, kitchen appliances, car engines, and power lines vanish, and people start to disappear. Dr Woodward, survived the accident, however he is poisoned by Nelec's man when he refuses to answer Nelec's question. The Air Force deliberately starts a wildfire (Operation Walking Distance) outside of town, to evacuate the entire town to a nearby base.

Upon arriving at the base, Joe finds Alice's father, who tells him that a creature had abducted Alice. Hence, Joe, and company sneak back into town and head to their school, where they break into Woodward's stash of confiscated items, thinking he may have hidden documentation about the creature which might help them save Alice. They soon discover papers, film, and audio recordings, revealing that the government had imprisoned an extraterrestrial who crashed on Earth in 1958. The alien only wished to rebuild its ship and return home using the shape-shifting white cubes. However, instead of helping it, the government allowed it to be imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force, who sought to seize its technology. The boys watch a film in which Woodward, a researcher at the time, is being attacked by the alien. This physical contact caused him to form a telepathic bond with the alien, learning that it only wanted to go home. Since then Woodward was sympathize to its plight and wanted to help it. He derailed the train to free it from captivity.

At this juncture, Colonel Nelec and his men storm the school and capture the boys. They place the children on a security bus and head back to the Air Force base. But the alien attacks the bus on the way bak. This results in Nelec and his men being killed, while Joe and his friends manaage to escape. The kids dash through the town, which by now is under heavy fire from malfunctioning military equipment; the military attempts to battle the alien with their malfunctioning equipment.

The boys find the alien's subterranean lair near the cemetery, along with several missing people who have been trapped there by the alien, apparently keeping them as food. They also discover that the town's missing electronics are there too, fused together to create a machine underneath the base of the water tower. Joe manages to rescue Alice, but as they escape, the alien grabs Joe, enabling him to telepathically understand the creature. He tells the creature that it can still live on even after painful events. The alien understands Joe's meaning through their tactile telepathic connection and lets go of him, allowing him and his friends to escape.

All the cubes which have broken free from Air Force transport trucks, as well as loose metal from around the town are attracted to the town's water tower. The cubes begin to align and a ship begins to take form around the water tower, which the alien then enters. Joe's metal locket, which contains a picture of him as a baby with his mother, is also drawn towards the tower. He decides to let it go. With that final piece, the ship materializes and the alien leaves. Everyone watches as the ship takes off toward space.