‘Midnight Special’ (2016) ***/*****
Nails the pomp, but botches the circumstance
After releasing Shotgun Stories in 2007, Jeff Nichols instantly got on the list of directors to watch. With the back-to-back releases of Take Shelter and Mud after that, however, it was clear that he wasn’t just one to watch — he was one of the most interesting filmmakers currently working. So when it was announced that he was going to be making some kind of larger budget thriller, which would see him re-teaming with his Shotgun Stories lead, Michael Shannon, Midnight Special shot right to the top of pretty much every movie nerd on the planet’s must-see list. Even after all of the advertising, it still wasn’t clear just what kind of movie Nichols had made though. It’s clear that there’s a boy with glowing eyes at the center of the story, and that everyone around him is very concerned about what he might be capable of, but is what’s going on with him sci-fi in nature? Is this a mystical movie? Perhaps it’s a story about religion?
The pickle here is that the mystery of what’s going on is a big part of what makes the movie interesting, so it’s hard to talk too much about it without letting the genie out of the bottle. We’re all intelligent adults here though, so I’m sure we’ll find a way to manage. What can be said about Midnight Special? It is about a boy, named Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), and the boy does have glowing eyes, and there’s a cult that has grown around him who consider him to be some sort of savior. At odds with the cult is the boy’s father, Roy (Shannon), who has kidnapped him out of their compound along with the help of a childhood friend (Joel Edgerton) and is now on the run. You see, at some point the cult’s leader (Sam Shepard) got custody of the kid, and it’s not clear why… but now we’re starting to ramble. The important thing to know is that the kid has some sort of special powers, he feels compelled to show up at a certain place at a certain time for an unknown reason, Roy intends to get him there, and the government, the cult, and pretty much everyone else in the world intends to stop him.
The great thing about Midnight Special is that Nichols drops you directly into the action from scene one. He gives you very little indication of who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, or why everyone is at odds. You just know that it’s clear that everyone on the screen believes that the stakes of what’s going on are world-ending, and that whether or not this kid gets to the coordinates in his head by the date he’s supposed to get there is important. The disorientation of being thrown right into the middle of a situation that’s clearly been developing for a while, the trust Nichols puts in you to figure out what’s going on without having it all spoon fed to you, and the pulsing anxiety of the film’s awesome, awesome score (by David Wingo), all combine to create a perfect storm of building tension that instantly engages you, thoroughly sucks you into this world that’s been created, and gets you literally leaning forward toward the screen, furrowing your brow and tapping your foot as you try to keep up with the series of calamities that get thrown in the protagonists’ way.
In addition to its masterful tension and build, Midnight Special also boasts a talented cast who overload the film with great performances. Michael Shannon is maybe the most interesting actor working today, and someone who Nichols has worked well with before, so it’s no surprise to see him acting as the heart of the picture. The story revolves around what happens to Alton, but it’s Roy who’s the one who is most concerned about the boy’s fate, and it’s Roy who’s willing to take the most direct action to protect him, so he becomes the main protagonist, and Shannon’s screen presence is so powerful and the amount of emotion that he’s able to let play across his face is so unbelievable that he adds a huge amount of weight and urgency to everything that goes down.
Given Shannon’s talent, it’s something of a surprise that he’s not even the performer who gives the best performance of the film. That honor goes to Edgerton — whose character is more conflicted about what they’re doing, takes more of a journey, and experiences more of a change over the course of the film — so he gets a wider array of things to do. Even given the great character that’s been written for him, it’s still amazing how well Edgerton is able to stand out when standing next to Shannon though. That guy has the sort of towering presence that tends to make other actors who share the screen with him shrivel — he eats them up — but Edgerton looks every bit as compelling as him in comparison. It’s the same trick he was able to pull in Warrior, where he had to share a bunch of scenes with the high-octane charisma that is Tom Hardy, yet still managed to hold his own throughout the whole film. Edgerton might be the most underrated actor currently working.
In addition to those two, Kirsten Dunst shows up playing the boy’s mom, and she’s also really good. Traditionally she’s been best known for being cherubic and peppy, but in season 2 of Fargo and now in this she’s started using her aging face to do the best and most nuanced work of her career. She’s able to exude so much more subtle emotion than people tend to give her credit for, and in this film she’s so committed that she basically becomes the human embodiment of worry. Lieberher is generally fine as the kid whose fate everyone is so caught up in. He spends a lot of the movie behind goggles and under headphones, being passive while things happen to him, but when he’s finally asked to do a bit more in the third act he’s believable while doing it, which is more than you can expect from most child acting. Probably the thing he’s best at here is playing sick and starving for sunlight. When this kid’s supposed to be projecting frailty he basically turns into a tiny General Tarkin.
The reason a movie that’s got so much great stuff in it doesn’t end up being great overall is that it really takes a nosedive about three-quarters of the way through its run time. Though Midnight Special initially sets up a bunch of interesting mysteries, and though it does a great job of building tension around those mysteries for a while, it waits too long to finally give the audience answers, and by the time they come there’s a frustration that’s already set in. It’s hard to invest so much in the series of seizures, freak outs, and health problems the kid goes through when you don’t know what he is or what’s causing them. It’s hard to invest in a father’s quest to keep his kid out of the clutches of the government when it kind of seems like he’d be better off being put in their hands anyway. A little ambiguity can add a welcome complexity to a story, but too much of it and what you’re watching just becomes abstract nonsense.
The bigger problem though is that after teasing out all of its questions for so long, once Midnight Special gives you the answers they’re completely disappointing. It’s built up that what’s going on with this kid could have world-ending consequences, or at least could provide humanity with a new kind of understanding that acts as a leap forward for the species, but then none of that stuff actually comes to fruition. The government agents hunting the boy prove to be ineffective, the cult who wants him back fade into the background so much that they wind up adding nothing to the movie at all, and then you’re suddenly left with a situation that only really effects a very small nuclear family, which makes the stakes very small and very personal. Of course, personal stakes can still resonate a good deal, especially when you’re telling a story with actors who are this talented, but all of the main characters’ reactions to the climax of the film get so glossed over that nobody really gets much to do. After acting frantically and being at emotional 10s for the majority of the movie, during the climax the protagonists suddenly shut down and face everything that happens to them with stoic, accepting nods. It’s like they all turn into grizzled cowboys out of nowhere. Midnight Special is a movie that intrigues as long as it appears to be building to something big, but once it’s revealed that what it’s building to isn’t that big after all, it ends up falling on its face.
