Midnight Special

Midnight Special proves there’s someone left in Hollywood who’s willing and able to draw viewers into an engrossing, carefully crafted story without baiting them with sex and violence. Writer-director Jeff Nichols has made an audience-pleasing movie that rivals M. Night Shyamalan’s best films.

Midnight Special opens right after Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) and his 8-year-old son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), have fled a Texas religious compound called the “Ranch.” Government agents question the Ranch’s members about Alton’s trancelike behavior of uttering strings of numbers. NSA communications specialist Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) admits to Ranch leader Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard) that the numbers originate in encrypted government satellite transmissions. Calvin has repeated these numbers during his sermons (and Ranch members chant them). The Ranch’s members also tell the federal agents they sense an otherworldly comfort when Alton’s eyes emit bright blue energy. They believe they’ll find refuge from an imminent judgment day as long as their “savior,” Alton, is with them.

Roy’s childhood friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton), helps Roy and Alton in their getaway. With two armed Ranch members and the feds in pursuit, Roy and Lucas move Alton at night from one safe house to another. They think they have four days to get him to a special location, but they aren’t sure what’s going to happen once they arrive. Nichols likewise keeps viewers in the dark: Is Roy or Lucas calling the shots? Why is Lucas devoted to Alton? And how does Alton’s mother (Kirsten Dunst) figure in? Initially, Alton isn’t aware of the source of his power, although he can wield it with dramatic effect on objects around him.

Nichols doesn’t solve every riddle (can you ever know the entire story?), but he does methodically reveal the right information. And even the storyline’s less significant details sparkle. For example, viewers aren’t primed to wonder about one particular character’s background until he unexpectedly addresses it midfilm. Then the murmur of “ahas” tells you light bulbs are popping on in viewers’ heads.

The camerawork and costumes are more evidence of Nichols’ meticulous watchfulness over the entire production. Casting gloomy brown shadows, faint yellow motel room lamplight diffuses characters’ disquiet. The Ranch’s taciturn women all wear plain, ankle-length dresses and uniformly pull their hair back in a single, tight braid. And close-ups of Roy’s weary face and rough hands justify his hope for a world beyond this one.

Still, Nichols doesn’t give in to caricatures. Although odd, the Ranch folk don’t lack humanity. Nor are the government agents mindless automatons, bent on stamping out religious extremists: Paul brings a great deal of compassion to his investigation of the unusual boy. And viewers increasingly empathize with Roy, a forlorn father believing he might have to yield his son to a greater cause.

Rated PG-13, the film has only one or two occasions of foul language (that the MPAA rating doesn’t note), minimal violence (some injuries from a gun battle), and no sexual content. But—again like much of Shyamalan’s work—Midnight Special seems to lack a moral. An X-Files mystery with no message, the omission makes the ending a bit anticlimactic.

Still, viewers will enjoy trying to figure out whether the forces at work are supernatural, extraterrestrial, naturalistic, or related to government experiments gone haywire. I think Nichols picks the right one, but the visually spectacular ending may come as no surprise. Nevertheless, that viewers can enjoy every moment of the film without having to sit through Hollywood’s typical attendant garbage is the best surprise of all.