Mid­night Special

There comes a point in any suc­cess­ful filmmaker’s career when they stop being referred to as ​‘the next big thing’ or ​‘one to watch’ and start becom­ing known sim­ply by name – their rep­u­ta­tion and irrefutable tal­ent ren­der­ing such labels obso­lete. For Jeff Nichols, that time is sure­ly now. Since announc­ing him­self back in 2007 with Shot­gun Sto­ries, the Arkansas-born writer/​director has qui­et­ly estab­lished him­self as a superla­tive spin­ner of dark, decep­tive­ly sim­ple yarns that always man­age to leave you smiling.

His films, which are con­cerned with the dai­ly anx­i­eties and strug­gles of ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, tend to be con­cise and unam­bigu­ous with­out being easy to cat­e­gorise. Yet unlike his debut fea­ture and its equal­ly accom­plished fol­low-ups, 2011’s Take Shel­ter and 2012’s Mud, Nichols’ lat­est at once defies descrip­tion and exceeds expec­ta­tion. Which is to say that it builds on the ideas and themes explored in his pre­vi­ous work in strange and sur­pris­ing ways.

Appar­ent­ly bor­row­ing its title from the Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival song of the same name, Mid­night Spe­cial sets out its stall as an atmos­pher­ic chase movie before reveal­ing itself to be an ambi­tious super­nat­ur­al thriller in the spir­it of a Close Encoun­ters-era Steven Spiel­berg sci-fi. Prin­ci­pal­ly its focus is the fraught yet ten­der rela­tion­ship between work­ing-class father Roy (Michael Shan­non) and his unusu­al­ly gift­ed eight-year-old son Alton (Jae­den Lieber­her), who set a course for an unspec­i­fied (and pos­si­bly unknown) des­ti­na­tion dur­ing a sus­pense­ful, near word­less open­ing sequence. Beyond that, the film seeks to con­vey the acri­mo­nious dis­trust that exists between parochial mid­dle Amer­i­ca and the pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment agen­cies sup­pos­ed­ly act­ing in the name of lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all – both of whom Roy and Alton are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to evade. And that’s as much as we’re will­ing to say.

Aside from the odd bit of cast­ing news, Mid­night Spe­cial has been shroud­ed in secre­cy since film­ing com­menced in ear­ly 2014, and indeed it is best to go into the film with as lit­tle pri­or knowl­edge of the plot and char­ac­ters as pos­si­ble. If this review is light on spoil­ers, how­ev­er, it’s only because attempt­ing to dis­til the key scenes into a few words would be an utter­ly futile exer­cise (a series of exclam­a­to­ry reac­tion gifs would be far more illu­mi­nat­ing). Nichols is the kind of direc­tor who favours the slow burn over the instant pay­off, mean­ing that the high-ten­sion, low-dra­ma man­ner in which his mod­ern-day para­ble unfolds makes the third-act fire­works even more dazzling.

Real­ly though, Mid­night Spe­cial is a spec­tac­u­lar reminder that the best films are able to stim­u­late our imag­i­na­tion while leav­ing room for a lit­tle intro­spec­tion. The ques­tion that pro­vokes the most telling response comes cour­tesy of Adam Driver’s sym­pa­thet­ic gov­ern­ment stooge: is this kid a weapon or a sav­iour? Nichols doesn’t pro­vide an answer as such, instead ask­ing us to empathise with the beliefs, fears and prej­u­dices of both sets of antag­o­nists fight­ing to make sense of some­thing that nei­ther can ever tru­ly understand.