For someone who never seen one film written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud), it might be a good way to see how Midnight Special will turn out, which happened to end up being a good Sci-Fi with a kid UFO (St. Vincent’s Jaeden Lieberher) as the central character. Immediately from scene one, you’re already into the story and it has some sort of connection to why they want to protect this kid. It felt like a mixture between 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1984’s Starman with its unique Sci-Fi elements. It’s well acted by the cast especially from Michael Shannon and Lieberher, and the score by David Wingo was really haunting. But it wasn’t all that riveting as it hoped it would be within a lot of scenes with not a lot happening, but when there’s something exciting going on, then it really hooked me in.
Midnight Special was a good, fresh original Sci-Fi to appeal to an indie crowd. Even though it didn’t quite live up to expectations to love it, it’s very intriguing and ambitious in many ways.
Grade: B
DC's Take 