Starring Michael Shannon. Rated PG

Some kind of ever-lovin’ light from the old Leadbelly song is shining on the poor souls on the run in Midnight Special, an intriguingly literate sci-fi drama. But what kind, exactly?

When we meet Michael Shannon’s taciturn Roy, he’s absconding with pal Lucas (Joel Edgerton) and Roy’s small son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher, this decade’s Haley Joel Osment). Turns out they’ve nabbed him from a religious cult referred to as the Ranch, where the kid’s heavenly prognostications have put everyone in an apocalyptic mood. Filled with suited men and women in sister-wife dresses and upswept Kim Davis hair-don’ts, the place is run by a smooth-talking preacher (Sam Shepard), and damn if he don’t want that boy back!

As they make their way across rural Louisiana, the three are chased by armed Ranchers, police, the FBI, and even the NSA, in the form of Girls star Adam Driver, providing comic, human contrast to the self-consciously solemn behaviour of others in this frustratingly stilted two-hour adventure.

This is Shannon’s fourth appearance in as many features from Mud writer-director Jeff Nichols, who favours a child’s-eye view of modern life, with an inclination toward oversized conspiracies. Here, the first real tip-off that something much bigger is afoot comes literally from the child’s eyes. (Hint: he wears goggles most of the time.) Like Jesus and Superman, Alton has somehow landed a new family. But the connections between Roy, the Spock-like lad, and his mother (Kirsten Dunst, in a seriously underwritten part) are tenuous, and lack inherent emotion.

Eventual revelations are visually impressive, but the storytelling falters on more basic levels. After laboriously creating the paranoid world of the Ranch in the film’s strong first hour, Nichols never returns to it. You leave the theatre wondering what else he forgot, or didn’t quite think through.