USA / South Africa 2012 89m Directed by: Josh Trank. Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw, Bo Petersen, Anna Wood, Rudi Malcolm, Luke Tyler, Crystal-Donna Roberts, Adrian Collins, Grant Powell, Armand Aucamp..
Andrew is a troubled but creative teen with a keen visual eye and a high-quality HD camera. He is introverted and socially awkward. Along with his friends, Matt and Steve, they make a discovery that leads them all to acquire powerful telekinetic abilities. They're now capable of, well, almost anything. But things take a dark turn.
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Josh Trank's "Chronicle" is the best, most clever mockumentary film this amateur critic has ever seen. Walking into the picture knowing next to nothing about it, I did not expect it to follow in the tradition of "The Blair Witch Project" with every shot taking place from a hand-held camera and I must confess, that when I realized this was the perspective it was going to take, I started to groan, thinking I was going to have to suffer through another "Cloverfield" or "The Last Exorcism." So my reservations at the beginning only amplified my excitement at the end.
Don't ask me why the movie is called "Chronicle" because I still am not sure, but here's the plot. Three friends (a popular sports star, a shy dweeb, and his cousin) are going through the rhythms of their lives when they discover a chasm in the middle of the forest. And being movie-teenagers, rather than summon the authorities, they go inside. Down in the chamber, they find (I think) a big blue crystalline object. The camera loses power. Cut to a new camera, and the kids have developed telekinetic powers. They can levitate objects, hurl things across the room, and fly like Superman.
You'd expect the movie to become a buddy-film, with the three kids becoming crime-fighters, heroes of their local town. That is not the case. Instead, "Chronicle" which was smartly written by Max Landis, decides to delve for the authentic. The kids use their powers on impulses and whimsies, not sudden desire to be role models. For instance, in one of the movie's best scenes, they play pranks in a shopping mall, pushing carts away from people, and scaring the daylights out of a little girl by making the stuffed animals in the aisle float and dance in front of her. In another moment, one of them sets off a leaf-blower to lift a female classmate's skirt. By making these kids less of the typical do-goodies, they seem all the more believable. And the dialogue the three immensely-talented actors (Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan, & Alex Russell) are given sounds so natural. It is the way young people talk. Mr. Landis makes good screen writing look easy.
The movie is composed of recorded footage, but what makes it so terrific is the way it tinkers and plays around with that convention. It's inventive. One of the kids learns how to make his video camera float and move around, and this is so much more effective than the nauseating shots of "Cloverfield" and "The Last Exorcism" which were so fuzzy and out-of-focus that it became really annoying, really fast. In addition, the film does not stay with one camera in one unbroken shot the entire time. There are other cameras rolling, from other sources like cell phones, and security monitors. The filmmakers also utilize classic motifs such as establishing shots. For example, the story takes place in Seattle, but we don't figure it out until about ten minutes in, when we see the Space Needle through a windshield. But the very best usage of this cinematography is after the three characters have learned to fly, and are playing football in the clouds. My only wish is that this scene had contained them dropping the camera, and racing down to catch it before it hit the ground.
Oh, well, I guess we cannot have everything.
Effective as its cinematography is, I do wish "Chronicle" had gone for the traditional movie-making style, without everything being "found footage." Yes, the gimmick is used efficiently here, but it's still a technique I do have my reservations about. And although the sequences I admire, especially the flying parts, are spectacular, in hindsight, I kept wondering just how much more spectacular they would have been with normal film-making techniques. Also, Ashley Hinshaw gives a good performance in which is unfortunately a thankless, insignificant, and underdeveloped role as a love interest. She's first of all not on screen enough to justify her existence, and does little besides hold another camera and look pretty.
2012 seems to have gotten a great start. Hopefully, Hollywood can redeem itself for the more-or-less debacle that was last year. "Chronicle" is certainly a step in the right direction. And after watching the film, I was all the more impressed to learn that its director, Josh Trank, has never made a movie before this one. Sometimes you can tell it's a director's first effort, but not in this case. As far as I was concerned, Mr. Trank was a pro with ten, twenty years of experience. He knows how to tell a story, even with gimmicks, and I look forward to his entire career.
Review by TheUnknown837-1 from the Internet Movie Database.