Chronicle/2012
Directed by: Josh Trank
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordon, and Michael Kelly
The Plot: On the night of a barn rave (guess we still have those up here in Seattle) three high school students discover a hole in the Earth and decide to investigate. Once inside the metaphysical heart of this wonder well they're given powers beyond teenage reckoning. Where did the powers come from? God himself couldn't tell us. How will the boys use their new, supernatural gifts? For good? For evil? For common jack-assery?? One of them decides to film the trio as they discover the limitations - or lack thereof - of their telekinetic superpowers.
The Film: Think of Chronicle as a low-calorie Unbreakable. Josh Trank (Herr Direktor!) decided to go the found footage route (which plays here about as good as it's probably ever going to play thanks to a serious special effects budget two or three tiers under Bad Robot's Cloverfield) with his budding superhero flick, giving Chronicle a more improvised wit and energy.
The reasons behind filming the events ("I'm filming things now...") are a bit on the bony side. And the mystery as to who or what cut the final product together for us to view...?
Well... sadly aren't much of a mystery at all.
Josh Trank cut the film together. Chronicle's director even threw in the towel trying to keep the movie within the constraints of a legitimate work of Cinema Verite and tossed a few extra close-ups into the final act. We'll excuse the coloring-outside-the-lines in this instance - Chronicle is mostly a fun little movie. As the superpowers manifest, and the limits of the juvenile male mind suddenly don't have limits anymore, the film takes off (quite literally) in a way I don't think an audience might be prepared for.
As long as you're ready to accept it at face value (it's Jackass, but with Jedi Knights) you're probably going to be comfortably surprised through most of Chronicle's slick-n-streamlined 83 minute run-time.
The acting however - as well as the effects work - grow more and more suspect as the drama ramps up in the final fifteen minutes of the film. Josh Trank decides to take his movie in a direction much more in tune with Ohtomo's 1988 anime classic Akira, and less in a direction that worked for the first two-thirds of the film.
Chronicle's a great movie without issues - when the script fabricates issues for our super-teens to deal with...? The film has issues. Added to the problem are the muddled conditions of what these "super-powers" can and can't do. They can knock a truck off the road... but they can't lift the same truck out of a pond to save the people trapped inside? Then again, maybe we can't blame the restrictions of telekinesis in Chronicle's instance. In this instance it's probably the guy holding the pen - and for every terrific opportunity the writer discovered using newly discovered superpowers, (my favorite gave this "found-footage" film a reason to have camera work on par with a John Woo movie) he's blanking on five or six others.
The Verdict: Chronicle is a decent little movie that aims for the stars and only comes up shy during the final moments of the film. This is a much funner movie than it has any right to be, (do the math: February+ Found-Footage-Teen-Movie usually equates to fourteen carat crap) and a solid entry into the found-footage sub-genre that seems to spark two or three new products a quarter this generation. If there's a sequel to this (and looking at the rotten success of those Paranormal Activity flicks... there could be hundreds) I'm betting the problems with this initial entry get ironed out.
Chronicle may be juvenile and goofball - but it's kind of cool too.
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