Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Midnight Special Blu-ray Movie Review

Shining His Light

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 20, 2016

"He Is Not Like Us" proclaimed the trailer for Midnight Special, the fourth feature from writer/director Jeff Nichols and the filmmaker's first effort backed by a major studio. The trailer then offered glimpses of the eerie phenomena emanating from the boy at the film's center, including bright lights and powerful energy fields. While the kid in Midnight Special may not be like us, he is like other youngsters in movies whose outer innocence masks dangerous potential and who have been a genre staple from Village of the Damned to The X-Files. Midnight Special continues Nichols' efforts to put his personal stamp on familiar tropes following the critical success of Take Shelter and Mud (both independent features prominently noted in the trailer). Unfortunately, Midnight Special fails to live up to its promise. Though it might make a terrific pilot for a TV series, as a standalone film it disappoints.

Warning: Midnight Special drops the viewer into the midst of ongoing events, allowing the history of the characters and their relationships to emerge gradually. From that perspective, the following discussion may be deemed to contain minor spoilers.

The "he" who isn't like us in Midnight Special is eight-year-old Alton Tomlin (Jaeden Lieberher), a delicate and sweet-natured kid who wears blue swimming goggles as a precaution against the blinding light that randomly radiates from his eyes. Alton has been raised on a remote Texas farm inhabited by the followers of a preacher named Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard), who deems Alton a messenger from Heaven and has adopted him as his own son. The trauma of having Alton taken away from her provoked his mother, Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), to desert the farm's cult. Now, two years later, Alton's father, Roy (Michael Shannon), has followed his wife, fleeing Calvin's group with his son in tow. An amber alert has been declared, and local law enforcement has mobilized.

But the police aren't the only ones pursuing Alton and his father. Federal authorities monitoring Calvin's farm have detected that the child's delphic pronouncements, which Calvin and his followers treat as holy writ, contain classified information intercepted from government satellite transmissions. A consultant for the NSA, Paul Sevier (Adam Driver), has been tasked with assessing the threat posed by Alton's abilities, and he seems to be the only person among the boy's pursuers who is genuinely intrigued by Alton's unique gifts. The Blu-ray extras confirm that Sevier is intended as an amalgam of the scientist and his translator played by François Truffaut and Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but in Driver's performance, he seems more like the spooky government renegade with a poster in his office proclaiming "I Want to Believe".

Midnight Special follows the pursuit of Alton and his father, who are assisted by Roy's boyhood friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton in an underwritten role), as they alternately run and hide with no clear plan except to reunite Alton with his mother. Throughout the chase, Alton continues to manifest strange abilities. (A sequence of what might be called aerial bombardment is particularly impressive.) As it gradually becomes clear that Alton is being summoned to a rendezvous much like the alien landing at Devil's Tower or E.T.'s spaceship rescue, Nichols appears to be building to a conclusion that will introduce humanity to a new race of beings or an alternate dimension (or both), but Midnight Special fails to deliver the promised encounter, offering only futuristic tableaux instead of a transcendent sense of wonder and awe.

Part of the problem may be budgetary. At an $18 million production cost, Midnight Special is the most expensive of Nichols' films to date, but that sum isn't nearly enough for the kind of operatic effects sequence that Steven Speilberg orchestrated to cap Close Encounters. The bigger problem, though, is a failure of imagination. As Nichols admits in the Blu-ray extras, he did not attempt to conceive in full the "other" world to which Alton is mysteriously linked. Having made the choice not to explore that alternate reality in depth, he should have left it to the viewer's imagination, offering no more than a glimpse of the ineffable, as he did at the end of Take Shelter. Like The X-Files, which Nichols' film resembles more than it does a Spielberg-style fantasy epic, Midnight Special works best as a thriller generating suspense from the inexplicable and unknown. But as often happened in The X-Files, when the moment arrives to reveal the truth that's out there, Nichols can't satisfy the expectations he's built up so effectively.

Midnight Special Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Midnight Special was shot on film by Adam Stone, Nichols' usual cinematographer, who also photographed the micro-budgeted Compliance. Post- production was completed on a digital intermediate, and, as is typically the case with contemporary productions originated on film, the DI process has smoothed out the grain structure, although the colorist has managed to retain the subtly textured look of images captured in emulsion. Consistent with its title, much of Midnight Special takes place at night, both outside and within the dark interiors of dim dwellings or cars on the road. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presents a sharply detailed image with consistently solid blacks, marred only by a few minor instances of banding. White levels are excellent, as demonstrated, e.g., in a scene set in a government interview room that recalls the "blank slate" in The Matrix. In daylight scenes, the color palette is generally realistic, with the notable exception of the manifestations of Alton's powers and the film's final "reveal". Warner has mastered the film at an average bitrate of 27.52 Mbps, which is somewhat higher than the usual rate it provides for non-catalog titles.

Midnight Special Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Midnight Special's 5.1 soundtrack, which has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, effectively rises to the big occasions, almost all of which accompany Alton's use of his mysterious powers and therefore cannot be described in detail without spoilers. Otherwise, surround activity is largely confined to environmental ambiance and an occasional pan between front and back (e.g., of a car hurtling forward). The dialogue is clear and natural-sounding. The expressive score is by Dave Wingo, who also scored Take Shelter and Mud.

Midnight Special Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Origins (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:12): Nichols describes the inspiration, sources and central themes of the film, with comments from the principal cast. Nichols and producer Sarah Green also discuss the conception and design of the film's "other world". "I spent a lot of time thinking about where they lived", says the writer/director. "I didn't spend much time thinking about what they do."



• The Unseen World (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:36): Each segment focuses on a specific character, with comments from Nichols and the cast. A "play all" function is included.
• Roy
• Lucas
• Sarah
• Alton
• Sevier



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays a trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, plus the usual Warner promo for digital copies.

Midnight Special Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Midnight Special has a fine cast and an interesting premise, and it's unfortunate that Nichols couldn't find a more effective conclusion for a story that, by its very nature, must remain open-ended. There are good things in the film, but it's unsatisfying. The Blu-ray will not disappoint, although the extras are slim. Rent if curious.