Chronicle Review

Admittedly, I walked into this film ready to hate it. I’ve vented more than once about the current death of Found Footage films, because a lot of them are pretty fucking terrible. The Found Footage conceit – that what the audience is watching is supposed to be real – usually doesn’t work because we already know that it isn’t. A lot of less skillful directors don’t seem to realize this and for every 90 minute movie you get about an hour of drawn out, insufferably dull mockumentary garbage, interspersed with 25 minutes of shaky cam, as the actors run from whatever it is that’s chasing them, and if you’re lucky, 5 minutes of geniune thrills.

Thankfully, Jason Trank and Max Landis are anything but unskilled. The movie Chronicle – which focuses on a trio of teens who develop telekinesis after encountering strange crystals in an underground cave – seamlessly frees itself of its mockumentary style restraints when it needs to without making you feel like you’re being cheated. That’s just one good thing about the film. Another are the performances, most the abusive relationship between protagonist Andrew (Dane Dehaan) and his father Richard (Michael Kelly, good as usual) who’s a former firefighter with a substance abuse problem. This interplay creates most of the tension of the movie, turning it from comic book wish-fulfillment into a bizarrely tragic gender reversal homage to Stephen King’s Carrie, swapping out a heavy religious theme for the more agnostic post 9/11 era.

The movie is not without its faults; the flight scenes are a little sketchy, and some of the high schoolers look like they are in their mid-twenties. But what Chronicle does have going for it – good actors in a well-written story - definitely outweighs its flaws, and it’s nice to see a Found Footage style movie that tries a little. Hopefully, this will raise the bar a little higher for future films like this.