We called ourselves “monster kids.” They called us weirdos. And in the ’60s and ’70s, we were a geeky, ghoulish tribe.

We haunted newsstands for Castle of Frankenstein magazine. We built every creepy Aurora model. And on weekends, armed with the family camera and 50 feet of Ektachrome, we tried to make our own movies.

The affectionate, nostalgic and often thrilling “Super 8” is about a gang of kids just like us, misfits all, who set out during one eighth-grade, 1979 summer to make a monster film.

And end up filming a real monster.

Director J.J. Abrams — who amped up television with "Alias" and "Lost" and then segued into movies with "Mission: Impossible III" and the "Star Trek" reboot — has kept this film under wraps as long as possible. It's an anticipation-building gimmick he's tried before.

But unlike the even more secretive "Cloverfield," which he produced, this film doesn't disappoint. It's as full of rich characters as it is smart popcorn-movie scares.

With its band of best friends in trouble, it feels like a film you might have seen once on a double feature with “Stand By Me” or “The Goonies.” And because style should always follow content, it looks a bit like one of those movies, too, with careful compositions and clear editing (but much, much better special effects).

Movie Review

Super 8 (PG-13) Paramount (112 min.) Directed by J.J. Abrams. With Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning. Now playing in New Jersey.

Rating note: The film contains violence and frightening images.

Stephen Whitty's Review: THREE AND A HALF STARS

The story starts when the friends are trying to finish making their opus, a zombie picture. They’re out one night doing “location shooting” when a train crashes and something gets out.

Or, rather, some Thing gets out. And the Army arrives in force, just as citizens start disappearing.

Abrams is playing a couple of high-stakes games here. His insistence on keeping the monster off-screen for as long as possible — nearly 90 minutes, in fact — builds up perilously huge expectations. There are one or two too-cute moments (Steven Spielberg was a producer, after all) and the mystery has a few twists that never quite straighten out.

But the young actors are all very good, particularly Joel Courtney as Joe, our good-hearted but decidedly average eighth-grade hero. And Elle Fanning — who already has the preternatural calm of the young Jodie Foster — is superb as Alice, the sole girl in the group.

And while the script, as we’ve come to expect from Abrams, is excellent, the visuals impress, too — like the cut from a factory sign to a suburban wake that suddenly tells us all we need to know. Or the clever framing at a gas station that always keeps the monster just out of sight.

Yes, Abrams is a little too fond of easy jokes about retro technology (and strangely besotted with lens flares). And I never quite bought that Alice would hang out with boys making a horror movie. If we could have gotten girls to hang out with us back then, we wouldn’t have been making horror movies.

But those are small complaints about a big, bold entertainment — guaranteed to bring out the monster kid in all of us.