10 Years Later, One Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Shines A Light on The Genre's Corny Flaw

"When Jeff Nichols set out to make 2016's Midnight Special, his intention was to create a film about parenthood, the feelings of powerlessness that come with it, and the faith required to let your child be their own person in the world. When his son had a seizure at 8 months old, Nichols realized that he 'had no real control over the health and well-being of [his] child.'"

"By dialing back the sometimes zany pace of those films and replacing it with understated character growth that is empathetic toward - or at least fleshes out - the parents' views, he creates something completely different. You'll never look at the bumbling parents in E.T. the same way again."

"Many of the reviews at the time noted how confident Midnight Special was in limiting backstory and trusting the audience to connect the dots - a disorienting tactic that puts the focus on the characters. The opening scene drops viewers into the tense reality of two armed men sneaking a boy out of a rural Texas motel room into a truck, knowing nothing about the connections between any of these characters."

Jeff Nichols created Midnight Special as a meditation on parenthood and the inability to control a child's health and destiny. The film draws inspiration from classic sci-fi films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, featuring a child harboring a supernatural secret pursued by government forces. Nichols distinguishes his approach by slowing the pacing of similar films and developing empathetic characterization of parents, creating nuanced perspectives often overlooked in comparable movies. The narrative employs minimal backstory exposition, trusting audiences to piece together connections between characters. The opening immediately immerses viewers in tension as armed men extract a boy named Alton from a motel, fleeing a religious cult called the Ranch led by Pastor Calvin Meyer, while government agencies pursue them.

Read at Inverse