Nichols' new film, Midnight Special, creeps further into science-fiction territory: It’s a thriller about a father (Michael Shannon) and mother (Kirsten Dunst) trying to protect, from both governmental forces and a violent cult, their son (Jaeden Lieberher) who has mysterious powers. When it works, it works in the same way that Take Shelter did — by grounding its drama in recognizable, mundane reality and minimizing the paranormal histrionics. Nichols has a light touch when it comes to genre, which is Midnight Special’s great blessing and
At first, we don’t even really know what kind of film we’re watching. An Amber Alert on TV announces that authorities are looking for Alton Meyer (Lieberher), an 8-year-old who’s been abducted by a man — supposedly armed and dangerous — named Roy Tomlin (Shannon). We then see Tomlin and another man, Lucas (Joel Edgerton), hovering over the boy in a dingy motel room. The kid is covered in a sheet wearing headphones and goggles. He’s reading a comic book. Is this a kidnapping?
Not quite. We soon learn that Roy is Alton’s birth father and that he’s snatched back his son from the Third Heaven Ranch, a fundamentalist cult led by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard, mostly wasted), the boy’s adoptive father. The Ranch wants Alton back: They consider him some kind of prophet because he has fits, speaks in tongues and issues predictions. The feds are also after him, as it turns out that the number combinations and words that the boy has been unknowingly spouting correlate to highly sensitive information. Revealing such things, says NSA agent Paul Sevier (Adam Driver, doing a pretty good Jeff Goldblum), carries “punishments of treason so severe the government probably hasn’t invented them yet.”
Traveling from Texas to Florida by night, Roy, Lucas and Sarah (Dunst) have been told by Alton himself that they must take him to a specific place on a specific day. They don’t know why; neither, at first, does Alton. The film keeps us guessing for a while as to what, exactly, this child is. Messiah? Alien? Demon? A government
The most impressive parts of Midnight Special center on the parents' dilemma. They love Alton
Midnight Special is exceptionally well-acted, and often quite gripping and sad. But Nichols can’t play coy to the extent that he did in