When you find yourself in cheap motel room, heavily armed and with the windows obscured with cardboard and duck-tape, you know you have made some questionable life choices. 

This is the scenario Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton find themselves in at the beginning of 2016’s Midnight Special.  This is just one of a series of such motels as they are fugitives from the law.  They have abducted Shannon’s son (Jaeden Martell) and are trying to get him to a certain place at a particular day and time.  I will not disclose the reason for this appointment, but I will say Martell has some special powers, which I will get to in a bit.

Also in pursuit of the trio are government agents, including an egghead played by Adam Driver.  The Department of Homeland Security has taken an interest in what is more than just a case of an abducted child, as they wonder how Martell came to know a series of numbers and letters that just happen to be super-top-secret encryption codes. 

These are part of the liturgy of a cult led by Sam Shepard.  Martell would go into fits and somebody would record his utterances.  These include all sorts of information, including the date and time Martell needs to be at that particular end destination, as well as the coordinates of that location. 

Bill Camp and Scott Haze are two members of the cult sent to retrieve the boy at all costs.  Typical of such people in movies doing “God’s work”, these are murderous thugs who will stop at nothing to reach their goal.

Martell tends to wear blue goggles and, as he also frequently wears protective ear covering, I initially thought his character was meant to be autistic.  Admittedly, his rather aloof demeanor also supports that. 

Instead, the goggles seem to block another of his powers, where intense beams of white light shoot from his eyes into those of the person across from him.  We’re not told exactly what the other person experiences, but it is enough to convince Edgerton, a childhood friend of Shannon’s who is late to join the team, of the shocking nature of the child.

Now, there’s only four possibilities I could come up with for the nature of what Martell might be, and it isn’t difficult to guess those.  Until the third act, it honestly could go in any of those directions, and it could just as easily be any of those outcomes.  I found myself mildly disappointed when Martell’s true nature is revealed and wish it had been left a mystery.

There are many interesting scenes in this, including Edgerton wearing night-vision goggles while driving with headlights off—something I haven’t seen in a film outside of T2.  I was also intrigued by the many pay phones we see in a film set in the present day and started to wonder if this was set on a parallel Earth.  I also marveled at the lack of foresight at our government’s secret prisons, which have security gates that can’t be closed when the power goes out.

There isn’t much more I can say about Midnight Special without spoiling some very surprising scenes.  All I will add is this picture was another collaboration of Shannon with director Jeff Nichols, as they had previously worked together on Take Shelter, a 2011 film with a similar vibe.  Those who enjoyed that film are recommended to check this out, and vice-versa.

Wait, there is one last thing I want to add: if one is trying to travel incognito, wouldn’t it make more sense to not cover the windows with cardboard? Seems to me that would only draw unwanted attention.

Dir: Jeff Nichols

Starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Jaeden Martell

Watched on blu-ray