In the summer of 1979 a group of friends, are out making a super-8 zombie films for a contest. Joe Lamb is the main kid and he's doing the makeup effects. While they are shooting at an old train station they witness it crash into a pickup truck that cuts if off at the tracks. The train derails and almost kills them. Then, someTHING emerges from the train, which is captured on a reel of film.
In their town dogs begin running away, as if afraid of something, and the army moves in, though they won't say what they are looking for. This doesn't sit right with Jackson Lamb, Joe's father, who is a deputy. He asks questions and investigates and they hold him captive. The army even sets the nearby Ohio woods on fire to evacuate all the people while they search for the alien. It's revealed that the creature was captured in the 1950's and was horribly mistreated and tortured. It learned to be a killer. The only thing it wants is to return into space. While all this is happening people are also disappearing, including Alice, who Joe has a crush on. When they go to rescue her they discover the alien is creating its spaceship out of pieces of our technology--and that it has been feeding on the captive people. They rescue Alice just in time
The latest genre movie from writer/director J.J. Abrams is sort of the flip-side of E.T.
While I enjoyed SUPER 8 and it pushed all the right buttons, it's simply meaner version of E.T, as these kids try to help an alien return to space and the alien isn't all so friendly. In fact, there's a resemblance between the multi-limbed alien here and the aliens in the Spielberg produced FALLING SKIES, which is probably no surprise.