One Sheet Poster for CHRONICLE

For weeks I’ve been seduced by the flashy marketing campaign of the movie Chronicle. I’ve tried my best to stay away from the lure of these “found footage” genre pics after the Blair Witch Project seriously left me with some psychological scars for years, but I digress. Yet something was so alluring about this film, it seemed like it could be different. It looked as if there could be some promise. It looked like they were going to sell me a ticket to see this film. And they did.

(WARNING: Spoilers Ahead~!)

Inside a cave Matt Garetty (Alex Russell, left), Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan) and Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) make a discovery that will change their lives

Chronicle essentially is about 3 high school teens who happen across a meteorite (that looks like it should have been carrying the last son of Krypton in it) which gives them all phenomenal powers that range from flight, telekinesis and super strength. From there the film is a roller-coaster of discovery and inner-battles as the trio attempt to understand these powers and hone in on what their destiny calls for them to do with them. Now there’s been lots of back and forth on is this or isn’t this a Super Hero movie? I have to say, this felt more like a Super Hero origins movie, somewhere in the vain of Unbreakable, yet mixed with a helping of Cloverfield chaos and a sprinkle of Jumper pacing. It certainly played to the young audience, though hit home with me on many levels that I related to.

The main character Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is the outcast, the nerd, the quiet kid who lives within his own world while observing all those around him. Of course this leaves him vulnerable to being picked on, ridiculed and emotionally unstable. He decides to hide even further from his world by buying a video camera which he decides he will document his life thru, though unless using it as a deterrent or defense mechanism, why document a world you dislike and dislikes you back, I don’t know.

Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) succumbs to his darker nature as his telekinetic powers become stronger

Now the film is clever because it’s all shot thru Andrew’s camera, well until we start encountering other students who have their own cameras for their blogs, or cameras on their phone, or the characters are in front of security cameras in various locations and then it jumps to those points of view. It’s this creative way of storytelling that the picture seamlessly skips from angle to angle and from a bevy of locations in a believable way. Though the one main issue I have, and yes, throwing in a heaping of knowing disbelief, is that Andrew is in the right place at the right time (or wrong depending on how you look at it) to record the moment when he and his 2 fellow classmates Matt (Alex Russell) and Steve (Michael B Jordan) discover the strange meteorite deep in the ground which give them their extraordinary abilities. But then you forget all that once the explorations and discovery of the guys testing out their abilities unfold and  at one point takes the viewer literally soaring with them above the clouds, these were some of my favorite scenes of the film.

This is a movie that feels it was concieved by that real life kid who was bullied while growing up, came home crying to an escape in a world of comic books, dreaming of a day he would magically acquire super powers so he could prove to everyone, including himself that he could be more then they see him as. As Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben once said; With great power comes great responsibility” and this film puts the trio of teen titans to the test as they discover how far these abilities can take them, and how much they can get away with. The film keeps a steady pace mixed with cleverness, fun, exploration and intensity.

Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) succumbs to his darker nature as his telekinetic powers become stronger

Along the way the film makes this dynamic shift in which our main character’s outcast and rejected life  evolves into a monstrous, unstoppable and fixated villain. And every bad guy has to have his emissary, so of course the good natured, all-American power infused key player becomes the unlikely hero. It’s not long before their roles become defined and a high-flying overhead conflict between right and wrong erupts amongst them. In the end one character closes out the film and it’s his story that feels as if all this was the build up to his true role, for this is his origin story which easily now can spawn into sequels. And it’s not unimaginable that in the way they teased the possibility that another Cloverfield movie may be made bt this time from the vantage point of other cameras, or of similar events taking place elsewhere in the world as in Battle: LA, it’s conceivable to think that elsewhere on Earth more of these craters of power-giving space rocks crashed and may have given birth to other heros and villains, and maybe over the course of the next couple of films we learn of these stories and see them all converging together.

Director Josh Trank and Max Landis the screenwriter did a great job and I really enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. Chronicle is high flying fun with the implanted question that makes you wonder what would YOU do if you suddenly had super-powers.