Try getting these teens off your front lawn. I dare you.
Three high school boys grow tired of a dance and decide to go spelunking in the back woods. Sounds stupid? Sure. But I can only think of roughly three dozen high school parties I’d rather have spent exploring caves than NOT making out to Eddie Money’s “I Think I’m in Love.” Andrew (Dane DeHaan), Matt (Alex Russell), & Steve (Michael B. Jordan, no relation) bring a camera along, which is often the best way to ensure not all will make it back out of the cave, but instead encounter some sort of (innocuous?) giant subterranean living crystal. And before the night is through, all three discover telekinesis. Cool.
The best feature of the “found footage” genre is people behaving like real human beings. That’s exactly the best part of Chronicle. The kids get super powers, yeah, and then act like teenagers with super powers. Do they ponder existential quandary or superherodom? Of course not. They behave like teen boys throughout the world – they pull pranks, they snicker, they bust one another, they have fun. They take turns throwing balls 
at each other’s faces just to see if the other can stop the sphere before impact. They stack legos and taunt Toys ‘R’ Us patrons. This is almost exactly what I’d do if my friends and I had developed telekinetic powers as teens.
And you know what? This is what Carrie White would do, too, if she lived in this generation. The sheltered life we imagined for her in the 1970s would disappear. This Carrie might still be friendless, yes, but she’d also be on-line trying to figure out why she didn’t get her period until age 16. The self-abusive feelings engendered by her uptight mother would almost certainly be fought on-line in chat rooms and on twitter. Just try getting 21st Century Carrie to clam up about the telekinesis:
FreakyCarrie>> Got a srprze!
HogBlood4U>> ??
FreakyCarrie>> Wait n C ;)
As time elapses, our trio grows more powerful. Naturally, the more powerful you get, the less tolerance you have for the weak. It’s as natural as overeating during Thanksgiving. Big problem is Andrew is abused both at home and at school. He’s also the most powerful of the three. Uh oh. Super powers in the hands of a guy with pain in his heart and a chip on his shoulder? This isn’t good. When Andrew uses his newfound gift to make a submarine out of an annoying redneck’s truck, Cousin Matt gets alarmed.
I love this part: The alarm lasts all of an hour or two, because then Steve realizes he can use his powers to fly. Fly?! F****in’ awesome!
To sum up:
“Dude, you almost killed a guy this morning.”
“Yeah, we should talk about that.”
“Hey look, I can fly.”
“CHECK IT OUT! I gotta do that!”
“ME TOO! What were we talking about?”
Chronicle has two huge edges over the standards of the “found footage” genre. The first is Chronicle isn’t primarily a horror film. The genre itself is almost entirely horror so that the question, “why was the footage found?” has a decent answer. But the product keeps getting worse and worse. The second is camerawork. Films like Cloverfield and Apollo 18 make me nauseous. Here, the filmmaker is telekinetic, so the camera can go anywhere and film anything without the absurd jolting and action climax blackouts. As of last fall, I thought these films were creatively bankrupt; the profit margins meant they’d still be around, but the creators kept feeding like vultures on the same wildebeest carcass.
Glad to know there’s still more carrion out there.
Rated PG-13, 83 Minutes
D: Josh Trank
W: Max Landis and Josh Trank
Genre: Discovered footage [read: fake documentary], sci-fi edition
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Telekinetiphiles
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Folks with a low tolerance for teen hijinks.
