Trailer
Plot summary
Lillian, Ohio, 1979. Fourteen-year-old Joe Lamb and his father, Deputy Jack Lamb, mourn the death of Joe's mother Elizabeth in a workplace accident, which Jack blames on her co-worker Louis Dainard. Months later, Joe's friend Charles shoots a zombie movie on a Super 8 camera for a competition, with Joe, Preston, Martin and Cary, and with Louis's daughter Alice, whom Joe comes to like. Filming at a railway depot one night, the group watches a pickup truck ram an oncoming train and wreck the depot, and their camera records it. In the wreckage they find crates of white cubes; the truck's driver is their biology teacher, Dr. Woodward, badly injured, who warns them off at gunpoint. An Air Force convoy under Colonel Nelec arrives, and then the town's dogs run away, the power surges and residents go missing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Super 8 (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- J.J. Abrams originally wanted to shoot the in-film amateur movie on real Super-8 stock, but Industrial Light and Magic struggled to blend CGI into its grainy look, so cinematographer Larry Fong switched to Super-16 film for the effects-heavy scenes instead.
- Joel Courtney, who had initially auditioned for a commercial, was chosen because director J.J. Abrams saw something "different" in him, while Riley Griffiths secured his role by submitting a self-taped audition.
