Super 8 (2011)

It’s the summer of 1979 in Lillian, Ohio. A group of middle school friends have been working together on a project to enter into a local Film Festival contest. Joseph Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his father Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) are still recovering from the tragic death of Joe’s mother in the town’s steel mill four months ago. Jackson has decided to send Joe away to a Baseball Camp for the summer but Joe insists he needs to stay and help his best friend Charles Kanyk (Riley Griffiths) complete his project. Charles is trying to produce an unbeatable zombie movie but he’s been having troubles coming up with a storyline and his biggest concern is having to compete against older kids with more experience and better resources. Never the less, Charles has added a new character, Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) will be playing their hero’s wife. Now they have a zombie, a hero and with a new wife they’ll have the makings for an incredible storyline too. Alice has agreed to drive the crew over to the train station for a midnight sneak-out filming of some new scenes, and while the camera was rolling they all witnessed a horrifying train derailment purposely caused by a crazed truck driver. Panic sunk in when they realized the truck driver was one of their school teachers and that he had miraculously survived the crash, but he pointed a gun and scared them away by saying that they and their parents would be killed if anyone knew they were there. Suddenly, the US Air Force approached the scene, they ran to the car and Alice sped them all back to town where they made a pact to never repeat what they’d seen. But this was to be just the very beginning in a slew of strange events in their town’s near destruction and a summer that no one would ever believe or forget.