Chronicle impresses in how it manages to tell a comic book superhero-style origin movie without it actually feeling like one. The story beats are familiar, but the presentation makes it all feel fresh and fun and new, which really is the big trick – how to tell the same story without people really realizing it is the same story. How can you get people to watch this and not just think Unbreakable meets Cloverfield?
The movie starts with picked-on high school senior Andrew (Dane DeHaan) setting up his video camera as a defense mechanism against his drunk and abusive father, vowing to record everything from now on. This extends to his day at school, even though his dad isn’t going to find him and beat him up there, but sure enough he gets picked on and insulted at pretty much every turn of his day, and it all gets captured by his camera. And on the day he decides to start this experiment, he gets invited by his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) to a big barn party in the middle of nowhere. After the obligatory misunderstanding and beating from a pumped up party-goer, Andrew and his camera get recruited by Matt and local popular kid and student body president wanna-be Steve (Michael B. Jordan) to record something they find underground out in the woods next to the barn. They do some exploring and find something weird and glowing and possibly living (or containing something alive). Then something freaky happens, the camera cuts out and when it comes back on, some time has passed as the three guys are now in a backyard, practicing their newfound powers of telekinesis, obviously derived from their encounter with the mysterious object.
From this point on, Andrew uses the camera both to record their progress as their powers get stronger and more focused and to shield himself from other people and the rest of the world, since he’s having such a hard time at life, what with his abusive father and dying mother and extreme lack of popularity. Eventually the world craps on Andrew a little too much, and this coincides with his powers getting stronger and stronger, and this makes Andrew reach the tipping point, at which he starts to use his powers to finally gain the upper hand on others, to get back at the bullies and to make money and to do whatever he needs to do to get by.
The three main characters in this movie are interesting, and their situation is obviously compelling, as all of us would love to obtain the powers that these guys end up having, so this makes for a good movie all on its own. Fortunately, the first-person point of view camera gimmick is done well, and never really gets too shaky and annoying but instead still looks pretty good – they even have Andrew use his mind to float his camcorder around in the air, allowing for some nice visual differences and variety in the shots, as it lets the filmmakers film the scenes with more cinematic flair than, say, The Blair Witch Project, but still keeping in line with the overall gimmick. And they cleverly manage to expand the scope of the presentation by eventually including footage shot by other people and surveillance footage from all sorts of different angles, which ultimately begs the question – which character in this story assembled all of this footage into the movie that we are watching? Weird.
Chronicle works well because of the friendship that develops between the three main characters as they work through their powers together – first they have fun doing little tricks here and there and playing the occasional prank on people, but then it becomes apparent that they need to be wary of what they do and how they do it, and as they have different ideas of what they should be doing with their powers, this drives them apart and eventually pits them against each other. This doomed friendship becomes especially tragic because these are pretty well realized characters and we understand, like Matt, that Andrew really isn’t a bad person, even when he flips out and starts causing massive destruction and chaos. And the script is written well enough that this transformation from weakling to “apex predator” transpires in a natural way, so nothing really comes out of nowhere. Instead Andrew’s descent makes for a tragic story, a good person pushed too far and driven to the dark side, making for a very compelling and interesting story.
Despite all of the “found footage” type of movies that have been released in recent years (and with all of them ranging in quality from “meh” to awful), it is very interesting to see this one break through the glut and be something worth noticing, a found footage movie and an origin movie that stands out from the huge packs of both genres. It’s a great, self-contained, well told story, and is definitely worth checking out.
Hear Christopher Crespo on SBK Live! every Monday night at 8:45 PM for a review of the prior weekend's box office and films.
Email Christopher Crespo at crespo11882@gmail.com.
Click here for Chris Crespo's Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week
Comments