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Super 8
In 1979, Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb of Lillian, Ohio and his 14-year-old son Joe mourn the death of wife and mother Elizabeth in a workplace accident. Jack blames Elizabeth's co-worker Louis Dainard for the accident, as Dainard had a hangover, resulting in Elizabeth having to cover his shift. Joe clings to his mom's 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.
One night while they film at a train depot, a pickup truck rams an approaching train head-on, derailing it (which they capture on film) and destroying the depot. After being scattered by the fiery chaos, the kids regroup and find crates of strange white cubes amid the wreckage, and discover 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. Watching their footage, Joe and Charles notice a large creature escaping the train. In a military hospital, Nelec questions Woodward about the creature. After Woodward rebukes him, Nelec has him killed with a lethal injection.
Louis and Alice get into a fight and she attempts to flee on her bike, Louis chases after her in a car but gets into an accident, as Alice is fleeing, the creature abducts her. Louis, while in recovery from his car accident, tells Joe the creature has abducted Alice. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary persuade Jen, Charles's older sister, to flirt with Donny so he can get them into town to rescue Alice.
Breaking into Dr. Woodward's trailer, they learn of his work as a former government researcher. In 1963, the Air Force captured a crash-landing alien. Its spacecraft, composed of the white cubes, allowed it to shape-shift. While being experimented on, the alien established a psychic connection with Woodward, convincing him to help it escape Earth. His effort was sabotaged by Nelec who discredited, and discharged Woodward.
Nelec captures the kids, but the alien kills Nelec and his airmen, allowing them to escape. Jack escapes and agrees with Louis to put aside their differences 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 townsfolk, 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, convincing that it could "still live" while bad things happen. Establishing an emotional connection between the two of them, the alien realizes that not all humans are as bad as Nelec and spares him, allowing 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, Elizabeth's locket is drawn toward the tower. Joe lets it go, completing the ship. As the ship rises into space, he takes Alice's hand.
The short film the children were making in Super 8 runs at the end of the movie beside the credit roll. In it, Charles's character asks for his short film "The Case" to be picked for a local film festival before being attacked by a zombie played by Alice.