Checked out the limited release, art-house science fiction film Midnight Special. This is a film about a child with ill-defined psychic or paranormal powers on the run from the religious cult who worship him and the combined forces of the FBI, NSA, local cops, and military who are afraid of him.
While I can’t say the film is bad, I will say that it confuses murky, explanation-free plotting with intelligent and thoughtful dialog. Nobody explains anything to anyone, including the audience, through 95% of the picture, leaving us pretty much just watching some people on the lamb for unknown reasons while a lot of sturm and drang from the authorities goes on around them. I wanted to appreciate the deliberate obtuseness of the storytelling but wound up just impatient over their deliberate disinterest in explaining anything.
We spend almost two hours in the theater and we get a kind-of/sort-of explanation of why everyone is chasing the kid. Some people have reported hating the ending…. I thought it was at least bold and high-concept and creates implications that are interesting to think about. Unfortunately and ironically, the little the movie explains in advance kind of ruin the visual surprise of it happening. It’d have been almost better had they explained nothing and let the end speak entirely for itself.
So I’m very mixed. It’s an interesting film with good acting from Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, and Joel Edgerton. But the deliberate, slow-paced, and quiet script go too far to obscure the story. I didn’t need a Hollywood blockbuster style-level of over-exposition but I did need something other than ill-defined mystery and hiding in motels while people make vague and cryptic comments.
Score: 76