Review:  Sci-fi thriller ‘Midnight Special’ keeps us in the dark in the best of baffling ways

“Midnight Special” announces the arrival of a filmmaker in total control of his technique as well as our emotions. A bravura science-fiction thriller that explores emotional areas like parenthood and the nature of belief, it’s a riveting genre exercise as well as something more.

Writer-director Jeff Nichols’ previous films (“Mud,” “Take Shelter” and “Shotgun Stories”) were well-regarded, but what he’s accomplished with “Midnight Special” takes things to a different level.

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Utilizing an expert cast top-lined by regular collaborator Michael Shannon, along with Joel Edgerton and deft child actor Jaeden Lieberher, Nichols has come up with an intelligent and effective melodrama that understands the power of bringing formidable restraint to the telling of an outlandish tale.

More than that, Nichols’ faith in his script and understanding of the mechanics of story allow us to enjoy “Midnight Special’s” intentional mysteries, to take pleasure in being pulled along by events that we don’t comprehend at first, situations that baffle the film’s characters as well.

One of the ways Nichols accomplishes this is by immediately thrusting us into the middle of a story whose tension and importance we experience before fully understanding where it comes from, and then expertly doling out information bit by bit, the way young Elliott placed Reese’s Pieces to intrigue E.T.

Before we see anything, we hear newscasters on a motel TV announcing an Amber Alert about the abduction of an 8-year-old boy named Alton Meyer (Lieberher) from San Angelo, Texas, with one Roy Tomlin (Shannon) identified as the kidnapper.

But inside that motel room, the tenor of the drama being played out is quite different. Tomlin is Alton’s birth father, and the bond between the two of them is strong and apparent. What is also clear is that Alton is far from an ordinary boy.

Lieberher (best known as Bill Murray’s costar in “St. Vincent”) plays Alton with a quizzical, almost otherworldly presence. He may be simply reading comic books with a flashlight, but his cobalt blue goggles signal that there is more going on than the TV news is aware of.

“It’s time, are you ready?” the father says to the son, and, accompanied by an equally concerned man named Lucas (Edgerton with a Texas accent), they are off into the night and the start of a mystifying journey that they are desperate to complete, even though at this point they’re not completely sure about the destination or even the purpose.

All the two men know is that they’re in it to the end because of the boy, who, we immediately find out, can do strange and magical things with his eyes that change people’s lives. So much so that two other groups are equally determined to stop them and take young Alton into their permanent possession.

The first is a religious cult called Third Heaven Ranch and led by the shrewd, charismatic Calvin Meyer (the reliable Sam Shepard), a preacher who has adopted Alton. Because the boy goes into trances and speaks in tongues, the cult treats him as a prophet/savior and feels it cannot exist without his presence.

The second is the U.S. government, personified initially by the FBI, which raids the Ranch and brings in NSA analyst Paul Sevier (a nerdy Adam Driver), who questions everyone in sight about Alton and his actions, much to preacher Meyer’s bleak amusement. “You have no idea,” he accurately says, “what you’re dealing with.”

Children with strange powers are, of course, a science-fiction staple, “Village of the Damned” and “Children of the Damned” being but two examples. Other sci-fi films are nodded to here as well, including “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and, in fact, seeing Nichols as someone like Steven Spielberg but with a darker palette is not a bad reference point.

Keeping us involved as we gradually find out everything we have to know about the boy and his journey is the combination of Nichols’ complete mastery of a tone of low-key intensity and strong acting by all involved, including Kirsten Dunst as the boy’s mother. Shannon, who’s appeared in all of Nichols’ films, is particularly good at conveying the combination of strength and anxiety, one of his specialties.

One of the reasons “Midnight Special” is so effective is that a great many of the behind-the-camera personnel — cinematographer Adam Stone, production designer Chad Keith, editor Julie Monroe, composer David Wingo — have worked with Nichols before and are attuned to conveying what he wants, the way he wants it.

As would be the case with any science-fiction/chase film, “Midnight Special” has some momentary implausibilities, but the film’s propulsive sense of narrative drive pushes us right past them, leaving us no time for a backward glance.

One of the film’s strongest elements is its ability to blend emotional content, scenes that touch on things like the responsibilities of fatherhood as well as what we believe in and why. Like Christopher Nolan before him, Nichols has managed to make a studio movie with an independent feeling, and that is good news, indeed.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com

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‘Midnight Special’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for some action and violence

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Playing: In general release