Midnight Special is an intriguing straight-faced science fiction-thriller which immediately shows us two armed and anxious men who've seemingly abducted an eight-year-old boy for reasons that are increasingly made clear as we course through the story. One of the men is Roy Tomlin (Shannon), who has a stronger bond to the odd duck of a boy, Alton Meyer, and the other is seemingly more along for the ride, Roy's friend Lucas. The men have taken Alton from the compound of an isolationist religious cult in the West Texas run by Calvin Meyer (Shepard), who are actively seeking the return of this boy who is seen within the cult as a messianic prophet whose seemingly random utterances have formed the basis of their beliefs, including the specific time and place in which something major is about to occur that will affect them all. Also hot on the trail of the men are members of law enforcement, including a brilliant analyst working for the NSA, Paul Sevier, who is desperately seeking knowledge on how and why the young boy has been spouting top-secret information that no one outside of their organization should possibly know, becoming a risk to national security if left unchecked.