Warner Bros
Alton may be able to penetrate your mind with his gaze, but he still isn't sure what kryptonite is.
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Midnight Special wastes no time getting to the point. From the very first scene, we're in the middle of the action, as two men and a little boy race their car down a quiet road somewhere in the American South. Immediately, small details give away that this is no ordinary getaway. In the driver's seat, Lucas (Joel Edgerton) is wearing night goggles so he can drive with the lights off. Roy (a crazy-eyed Michael Shannon) has a look of tight-lipped insanity as he listens to police chatter on their radio. And in the back seat, a little boy wearing swim goggles and giant headphones is calmly reading a comic book.
What the hell is going on here? That question propels the film with growing urgency as we learn more about Roy's son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), who is wearing those goggles for very good reason. We follow Roy and Lucas as they dodge the police—their faces are popping up on every news show as dangerous kidnappers—and try to shelter with friends who make oblique references to late-night sermons in a compound. Slowly, we piece together where the trio has come from, partly by watching more and more weird incidents coalesce around Alton and partly by watching NSA agent Paul (Adam Driver, in soulful non-Kylo mode) try to figure everything out. There's a great, spine-tingling moment where Paul asks his colleagues why satellite imagery shows a nuclear explosion hovering over Alton's location at all times.
A metaphysical mutant
What's made this flick from indie favorite Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) a favorite among critics is how the mystery of Alton's preternatural powers is woven into a human-scale story. We discover that Alton was born in what seems to be a charismatic Christian cult, whose leader took the boy away from his parents when he began to manifest bizarre abilities. Like a metaphysical X-Man, Alton can shoot a beam of light from his eyes into other people's, sending them otherworldly images and a sense of peace. There are hints that members of the cult are addicted to his gaze. It has even inspired a frantic devotion in Roy and Roy's friend Lucas, who are willing to do almost anything to protect the boy and bring him... somewhere.
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