Grassroots America blends with a healthy dash of paranormal intrigue in director Jeff Nichols’ (Mud, Take Shelter) provocative and thrilling genre mash-up of sci-fi and family drama, as a father goes on the run in order to protect his extraordinary young son.

Blue-collar American, Roy (Michael Shannon) has a young kid named Alton (Jaeden Leberher). But beneath the surface Alton is no ordinary boy. He possesses a mysterious set of powers that even Roy himself cannot comprehend – powers that require him to avoid direct sunlight and wear noise-cancelling headphones whenever he sleeps. So when father and son are forced to go on the run to escape religious extremists and local law enforcement, the race quickly escalates into a cross-state fugitive dash through middle America with everyone from the FBI, NSA and Homeland security seemingly desperate to capture Alton. But what is he? A weapon? A savior? Or perhaps something entirely out of this world? What is evident is that Roy will risk everything to protect his son in order to help him fulfill a destiny that could possibly decide the fate of an entire planet.

Impressively restrained yet limitlessly imaginative, this confirms Nichols as one of America’s most compelling storytellers. Modelled on John Carpenter’s Starman and using the idiosyncrasies afforded by the sci-fi genre to probe a deeper understanding of America’s socio-political climate, this is as supernatural as it is intimately human. A surprising and personal story about facing the unknown that’s tinged with a Spielberg-ian feel (think Close Encounters of The Third Kind) and a slow-drip tension and ambiguity that feel altogether new.

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