It isn't long before other familiar Abrams-isms start popping up as well, from the lithe, coltish, self-possessed girl that all the male characters are in love with (Elle Fanning, filling a character type previously embodied by Keri Russell, Jennifer Garner and Evangeline Lilly) to a hero (Joel Courtney) with serious daddy issues (Kyle Chandler -- Coach Taylor himself -- plays Courtney's stern, distant dad, while Ron Eldard turns up sporting a hilariously awful Bo Duke wig as Fanning's alcoholic father). More than anything, though, Super 8 is marked by Abrams' penchant for smashing genres together like toy train cars. To wit, Alias was a spy show, but it was also a family drama. His Star Trek reboot was a space opera, but it was also a coming of age tale. And now Super 8 is a small-town domestic drama, but it's also an alien invasion picture, one that plays vaguely like E.T. if that good-hearted, Reese's Pieces-eating extra-terrestrial had been captured and tortured by the government for some four decades, eventually emerging from his forced confinement really, really, really pissed off.

If only the movie did either of these distinct genres really well. To be fair, the small town stuff generally works, thanks largely to the terrific cast of kids that Abrams has assembled. The chemistry between the core group of five boys brings to mind the Rob Reiner classic Stand By Me, with Courtney assuming the Wil Wheaton part as Joe Lamb, a sensitive dreamer wrestling with some serious emotional turmoil. Instead of a dead brother, Joe is grieving for his mom, who was crushed by a girder while working a double shift at the local steelworks plant. And where Wheaton's character sought solace in writing, Joe's creative outlet is monster make-up and model building. His room is a virtual shrine to the horror and science-fiction films of yesteryear; eagle-eyed viewers will be able to spot vintage Star Wars and Fangoria memorabilia scattered around. Joe's best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) is another fanboy-in-training and his weapon of choice is a Super 8 camera, with which he's currently shooting a zombie movie starring the rest of their pals, including gawky Preston (Zach Mills), pyromaniac braceface Cary (Ryan Lee) and somber Martin (Gabriel Basso), whose habit for projectile vomiting when over-stressed also brings to mind Stand By Me. In need of a girl to play the role of the hero's wife in his zombie epic, Charles decides to ask Joe's secret crush Alice (Fanning), who turns out to be quite the little actress, thus making Joe even weaker in the knees. (Fanning has proven her preternatural skill in other movies like last year's Somewhere, but she's curiously narcotized here -- it's odd, but she's at her most animated when playing a zombie in the Super 8 movie within Super 8.)

After a strong first act, the movie starts to go off the rails -- literally -- when an army train transporting some mysterious cargo crashes in a spectacular fireball on the outskirts of town. After that, strange things start occurring when the sun goes down; for starters, the community's dog population mysteriously vanishes one night, eventually turning up in towns many miles away. Then people start to disappear as well, starting with the sheriff, which means his deputy (who also happens to be Joe's father) has to step up and assume command. The army brass isn't about to make Deputy Lamb's job easy though, claiming that the information about what exactly was on that train is on a need-to-know basis and he doesn't need to know. Meanwhile, Charles continues to shoot his movie, using the presence of the military as enhanced production value. While reviewing the footage they shot the night of the crash, he and Joe catch a glimpse of something otherworldly crawling away from the wreckage. Soon after, that creature nabs Alice, and with the military otherwise occupied Joe has to rise to the occasion to get his lady love back.

Next to casting, Abrams' chief strength as a writer/director is a terrific instinct for story structure. Go back and watch any Alias episode (well, at least from the first two seasons anyway) or even his Mission: Impossible sequel (trust me, it's much better than John Woo's take on the franchise) and marvel at the way he's able to construct a drum-tight narrative packed with plot twists and surprise reveals. That's why it's surprising that Super 8 feels so messy and unfocused. Usually, Abrams is able to build parallel narratives that feed off each other on their way to a common destination, but the alien invader storyline often feels as though its happening in a completely different universe than the small-town story of friendship and first love. In a sense, it's the reverse of what has happened in Abrams' past TV projects like Lost and Alias. There he got so caught up in the big picture, he lost track of or willfully ignored the small details. With Super 8, he's so focused on the details -- specifically his shout-outs to Spielberg -- that he forgets about the big picture.

It doesn't help matters that alien itself is so thoroughly uninteresting. For much of the film's run time, it acts like your typical nighttime boogeyman, striking in the dark and then scrambling away before anyone can see it. (Hiding the monster is an age-old sci-fi and horror tradition, of course, but it's hard not to think that Abrams is deliberately referencing Spielberg's Jaws by keeping the beast largely offscreen.) Once we finally do get a glimpse of this terror from another world, it's an epic let-down, not unlike that lump of CGI seen at the end of the Abrams-produced monster movie Cloverfield. The director's last-minute attempt to recast the alien as a sympathetic figure in a desperate attempt for a heartfelt Spielbergian finale also falls flat. Fortunately, the energy of the kids coupled with Abrams' dexterity with the action set-pieces does keep Super 8 from turning into a bloated blockbuster mess like the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean adventure or Spielberg's own The Lost World. But for me anyway, the most purely enjoyable part of the movie comes during the closing credits, when we get to see Charles' zombie film play out in full. And honestly, if given the choice, I'd rather have seen the feature-length version of that Super 8 movie than the one Abrams made.

Read why J.J. considers Super 8 his most personal movie yet in this interview with the director.

Does any post-Spielberg filmmaker appropriate childhood joys and making them even more potent than remembered better than J.J.? Omar G and Pablo G discuss in this video:

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