Super 8 is a 2011 American monster thriller film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler and tells the story of a group of young teenagers in 1979 who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The film was shot in Weirton, West Virginia, and surrounding areas, portraying the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio.

DETAILED PLOT

In 1979, Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb and his 14-year-old son Joe, mourn wife and mother Elizabeth, killed in a workplace accident. Jack blames Louis Dainard, whose shift she was covering as he showed up drunk. Joe clings to her memory in the form of a locket.

Four months later Joe's friend Charles is making a zombie movie for a Super 8 film competition. He enlists Joe's help along with friends Preston, Martin, and Cary, as well as Dainard's daughter, Alice. Though their fathers are opposed to their friendship, Joe and Alice become close.

While filming at a train depot at midnight, a train approaches and a pickup truck rams the train head-on, derailing it and destroying the depot. The children are separated in the chaos. Joe sees the door of a train wagon violently thrown off. The kids regroup and find crates of strange white cubes amid the wreckage before discovering the truck driver to be their biology teacher Dr. Woodward. Gravely injured, he warns them at gunpoint to forget what they have seen. They flee, as a convoy from the local Air Force base, led by Col. Nelec, arrives. Nelec finds an empty super 8 film box.

In the following days the town experiences strange events; dogs run away, several townspeople go missing, the electrical power fluctuates, and electronic items are stolen. Jack approaches Nelec but Nelec arrests him. Nelec orders flamethrowers to start a wildfire as an excuse to evacuate the residents to the base. Joe and Charles watch their derailment footage and see that a large creature escaped the train. Nelec confronts Woodward in a military hospital, seeking information about the creature, but when Woodward rebukes him, Nelec has him killed.

Alice's father tells Joe the creature has abducted her. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary persuade Jen, Charles' older sister, to flirt with Donny so he can get them into town to rescue Alice. Breaking into Dr. Woodward's trailer they find documents and a film from his time as a government researcher.

The film and tape recorder reveals that in 1958 and 1963, the Air Force captured an alien when it crash-landed. They experimented on the alien, while withholding its space craft, composed of the strange white cubes, which allowed the craft to shape-shift. The alien had established a psychic connection with Woodward, convincing him to help it escape Earth, but Nelec sabotaged, discredited, and discharged Woodward. While the kids are watching Nelec captures them but the alien kills Nelec and the airmen, allowing the kids to escape. Jack escapes and agrees with Louis to put their differences aside to save their kids.

The military attacks the alien but their hardware goes haywire in its presence, resulting in significant collateral damage. Joe and Cary find a massive tunnel system under the town. The missing townfolk, including Alice, are hanging unconscious from the ceiling of a cavern. Here, the alien is creating a device, constructed from the missing electronics, and attached to the base of the water tower. Using firecrackers as a distraction, Joe frees Alice and the others. The alien grabs Joe, who quietly speaks to it, saying "bad things happen" but that it "can still live". The alien allows them to return to the surface.

Everyone watches as metal objects from the town are pulled to the top of the tower by an unknown force. The white cubes reassemble to create a spaceship and, as the alien enters it, the locket in Joe's pocket is drawn toward the tower. After a moment, he lets it go, completing the ship. As the ship rises into space, Joe takes Alice's hand.

The detective-zombie short film the children were making in Super 8 rolls runs at the end of the movie beside the credit roll. In it, Charles asks for his short film "The Case" to be picked for a local film festival before being attacked by Alice as a zombie.