Movie Review: “Midnight Special” wants us to believe.

A fair warning: there will be those amongst you who, with good reason, wish to walk into “Midnight Special” knowing as little as possible. For those of you who wish to go in with no further knowledge of the film’s plot or its plentiful surprises, I would implore you to stop reading right here. For those who’ve seen the movie/don’t care, here it goes.

Imagine if you were the parent of a child with a gift. Not a burden, not a blessing — just a unique way of being that could potentially change our world. Then, if you will, imagine that an unknown third party deems your child to be a symbol of some greater power; a messenger on the behalf of some mysterious purpose you can only begin to comprehend. Imagine your child was regarded as a messianic figure. Would you forego your own hopes and dreams of having a normal family just so your offspring could fall in line with his or her otherworldly destiny? Or would you attempt to preserve their purity and hide them away from the world?

These are just some of the questions asked by “Midnight Special,” the stirring, soulful and brilliant new sci-fi picture from writer/director Jeff Nichols. As of now, it is the best film I’ve seen so far in 2016 and unless this just ends up being an un-fucking-believable year for movies, it has a very good chance of ending up on my Best of the Year list come December. It’s a sleek, souped-up genre piece that’s also very much an art film about faith and fatherhood and somehow, these two warring impulses never get in the way of each other, even as Nichols dutifully name-checks his various influences. For instance, there’s a lot of John Carpenter’s “Starman” in the movie’s scenes of hard men driving the darkened country roads at night (and of course, the crucial plot device of a precocious child with freaky telekinetic powers). There’s also more than a little “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in the movie’s second half; more than many other larger-scale blockbusters, “Midnight Special” is uncommonly earnest, a tense, wildly absorbing science fiction thriller that also doubles beautifully as a parable about the void that human beings occupy in the universe. It restores a much-needed sincerity to its genre and to Hollywood filmmaking in general: put simply, it makes us believe in the magic of movies again.

The director of “Midnight Special” is Jeff Nichols, who has only made four films now and is already shaping up to be one of the most intriguing and gifted American auteurs in his age range. He’s a part of an exciting group of directors, all of whom graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts. It’s a group that also includes “Eastbound and Down’s” Jody Hill and that poet of Southern rot, David Gordon Green. This is all just another way of saying that Mr. Nichols is a country boy himself: it’s a fact that’s apparent when you watch his films, all of which unfold in a blighted, beautiful, ungentrified modern-day American South where unsmiling men drink beer, drive pick-up trucks and live lives of rustic tranquility. Nichols, however, is also a fabulist: nearly all his films, from the apocalyptic “Take Shelter”, in which Michael Shannon’s protagonist suffered from torturous daytime hallucinations, to his rambling “Mud,” which was like Mark Twain by way of Charles Portis, carry with them palpable connotations of both fable and American folklore. That same degree of magical realism is front and center in “Midnight Special”: this may be Nichols’ most openly spiritual film, and that’s saying a lot (and, without a doubt, his most mainstream, but that’s neither here nor there). It’s also as rich an emotional experience as you’re likely to have at a movie theatre in this first half of 2016, one that’s bolstered by lucid and expressive camerawork, quietly explosive performances and a twinkling synth score that’s straight out of 1984. Along the way, Mr. Nichols puts tremendous faith in the audience, offering us the bare minimum of exposition and trusting that we are smart enough as viewers to put the movie’s many beguiling pieces together.

The movie begins on a note of clammy tension and proceeds to hum along at a low, slow and sinuously intoxicating pace for its first twenty minutes. We open on two hard-looking men sit in a motel room at night. Their exact location is unclear. The windows have been boarded up and the peephole taped shut. On the T.V., a news anchor drones on about an Amber alert for a missing eight-yea- old boy named Alton Meyer. A jarheaded state trooper, Lucas, (Joel Edgerton) peels the tape back and gazes out the peephole, then turns back. “It’s time,” he mutters as he turns to his friend Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon). Roy is a man who looks haunted by the past, and here he is seen embarking on a dangerous, potentially life-changing mission. We follow him as he walks into the next room to find that same “missing” eight-year-old boy from the television — Alton Meyer — huddled under a blanket, quietly poring over a comic book with a flashlight. “It’s time,” the older man tells Alton with a gruff, but undeniably tender edge. We begin to wonder if this is a kidnapping. “Okay,” is the boy’s reply, as he looks into the man’s eyes. Alton is Roy’s son, one whom he hasn’t seen in a while. Roy and Lucas take Alton and make off into the night. When a call goes out to police looking for a little boy being held hostage by two bad-looking dudes ridingin a beat-up 1972 Chevelle, Lucas puts on his night vision goggles, kills the headlights and cruises into the black abyss. All the while, Roy keeps a watchful eye on his son, bound to protect him by any means necessary.

We know almost immediately that Alton is no ordinary boy. In one hypnotic and eerie sequence, Alton, while gazing up at the night sky, sends a satellite literally spinning out of orbit and crashing down to earth. During his occasional fits of rage, a blinding blue light shoots out from his eyes, causing walls to collapse and car alarms to ring incessantly. Alton is so special, in fact, that he’s being pursued by members of a backwoods cult known as The Ranch — more specifically, the goons working at the behest of a powerful religious figure named Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepherd, returning to the Nichols fold after “Mud”). There’s also a gawky, self-effacing government lackey named Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) who is after Alton for reasons that are not revealed in their entirety until much later in the story. Alton and his protectors proceed to barrel with increasingly reckless abandon towards their final destination, perhaps in the name of the ultimate salvation, or just the kind of rationalizing self-preservation that defines a lot of characters’ in Nichol’s films. As a director, he’s always been on the side of the zealots, the weirdoes; those who suffer from visions and take life from the earth. This is why “Midnight Special,” though many of its plot points would be ridiculous in the hands of any other filmmaker, ultimately succeeds with such grandeur. It treats its story with a winning and unusual reverence. Nichols’ approach is a grounded, understated one that roots even the most fantastical of plot twists in key human truth. Here, finally, is a science fiction film that capitalizes on its ideas — how the boy’s adventure artifacts of our youth can say something about who we are as parents, sons and friends — and ditches all that claptrap about colorful aliens having fights in the sky. Here, finally, is a genre movie we can believe in.

The performances are first-rate across the board. Shannon has been Nichols’ unofficial muse ever since his grungy, slow-simmering debut “Shotgun Stories,” and he’s found his most tender role to date in the form of Roy Tomlin, a man held captive and forced to watch as another man raises his child. Shannon is an actor of grim and reserved intensity, but there are flashes of real love in Roy’s eyes when looks at his son. It’s an incredible turn, and the one upon which the rest of the movie rests. For me, the MVP of the film has got to be Joel Edgerton, the chameleonic Aussie tough guy who’s quietly transformed into one of our best character actors over the last couple of years. His Lucas is the film’s most heartbreaking character — he’s a tough man of few words and boundless loyalty that nevertheless yearns for the sense of family and belonging that Roy possesses with Alton and the boy’s mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst). The film’s most purely noble character, Lucas is alone in the world, but when the chance comes to save Alton and put his own life on the line, he’s willing to sacrifice everything to be a part of this strange family unit in any way he can. It’s remarkably touching. Everything about Edgerton’s performance is note-perfect, from his regional South Texas accent to the character’s quick and messy bursts of physical violence. As Alton’s mother, Dunst continues her reformation into an unusual and gifted character actress: the look in her eyes when she has to finally say goodbye to her son says more than any line of dialogue ever could. In the role of Sevier, Adam Driver is relaxed, appealing and tremendously funny. It’s the kind of role Jeff Goldblum used to play in movies like “Jurassic Park” or “Independence Day” — the wry, vaguely Jewish scientific mind who is consistently underestimated by his bureaucratic overseers — and Driver brings a much-needed sense of humor to what is otherwise a very serious and solemn film. The point is that each of these characters — including Alton — is someone whom we come to care about deeply. We learn their personal histories and private desires without Nichols ever having to spoon-feed us, and their perilous plight eventually becomes ours as well.

After the movie, my wife posited to me a theory that I had not previously considered. Now, I wouldn’t dare spoil the awe-inspiring finale of this film for anyone who doesn’t know what they are in for — that would be too cruel an injustice to forgive. I will say, however, that “Midnight Special” ultimately ends by pointing to a vision of the future that is rooted in the imagined manifestation of our collective cultural past. Without giving away too much, the movie’s emotionally-charged conclusion tips its hat to cartoon visions of the future that were made popular through the junk culture of the 1950’s, as well as mid-century Modernism and the same fresh-faced progressivism that no doubt inspired Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland”. Not long before this, the movie reaches its grave emotional apex during a scene where Roy finally has to bid his son farewell — perhaps forever. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore,” mewls Alton, who for the first time in the movie, shows conspicuous signs of sorrow and hurt. “I’ll always worry about you,” is Roy’s reply. “I like worrying about you. That’s the deal.” And in this moment, the delicate balancing act that Nichols has maintained throughout the first two thirds of the film is purposefully ruptured, followed by a loving frame of Roy embracing Alton and Sarah in a familial embrace. My wife also pointed out to me that this moment looks almost staged to resemble a Biblical Nativity scene. Whether this is a purposeful allusion or my own bullshit or maybe just another one of Nichols’ mysterious digressions is up for discussion, but it’s fucking beautiful either way.

“Midnight Special” is the kind of experience that will restore your faith in going to the movies. It has moments that will make you laugh, moments of shock and awe, gripping action sequences, a sustained and stylish mood of retro dread and, at its center, the universal bond between a parent and a child. It is absolutely spellbinding cinema that lovingly takes the genre its director grew up worshipping and reconfigures it for our modern age in a way that speaks to our national anxieties and fears, as well as our primal concerns and dreams as people. I cannot recommend this movie enough. See it with your parents. See it with your best friend. See it with the person you love the most in this world. See it with the person you like worrying about. A