This is a very raw, sad, and beautiful film about faith and fatherhood, and it feels just as grounded and big-hearted as the other films Nichals has made, like Take Shelter or Shotgun Stories or Mud. Nichols earns that by telling the story in such an emotional way. Even as the film concludes, there are plenty of questions, some of them big, some small, that are still unanswered, and it's perfectly acceptable. It's not clear at first why they're running, where they're coming from, or where they're going, and Nichols does a very nice job playing with ambiguity here, definitely leaning towards the less-is-more school of storytelling.
Michael Shannon plays Roy, and when we meet him, he's on the road with his childhood best friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) and his little boy Alton (Jaeden Lieberher). What makes the film sing is the extraordinary control exhibited by Jeff Nichols as a filmmaker at this point, especially when he's working with Michael Shannon, who has given some of his finest performances when working with Nichols.
That's the basic plot of Midnight Special, and when you boil it down that far, it sounds like something familiar, something we've seen many times before.
A young boy who possesses strange and difficult-to-explain powers makes his way towards a mysterious rendezvous with his father doing everything he can to protect him from anyone who might stop him.
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