Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, here with a Slate, spoiler special podcast on Super 8, the new JJ Abrams movie.

Joining me in the studio and having just walked out of the movie with me is John Swansberg.

Hello, John.

Glad to be here.

Slate's culture editor and a welcome companion on the spoiler podcast.

Thanks for having me.

So we did not pre-talk this one at all.

We had a total silence, a vow of silence coming out of the movie.

Yeah, that was hard.

Yeah, it really was.

We had a whole subway ride where we had to sort of think of other things besides this movie to talk about.

Not that it's hard to have a conversation with you, data, but I think our gears were both kind of spitting, thinking about the movie, and we couldn't share those feelings.

But now we can't share those feelings, but now we can't. Yes, so now we can unleash it. So first of all, can I get your overall reaction?

Are you going to send people to see this?

Yeah, I think I am.

I really enjoyed it.

I would say the first half more than the second half, although that might be to be expected,

given the kind of movie this is, without giving away too much right away. I think with this kind of movie where there's a monster of some sort lurking, the moments

before you see the monster are always more exciting and tense than the moments after the monster

appears.

And I sort of feel like the movie lost a little bit of its crackle once it kind of kicked into

the, we're going to show you the monster, we're going to have the kind of ending.

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