4 gibbles out of 5

Director: Josh Trank

Chronicle is pretty rad-tastic.  It doesn’t smell.  It does, however, fizzle out.  But it does quite a bit well before it gets there. If you’ve seen the trailer to Chronicle, you’ve seen the majority of the plot points in the movie.  Thankfully, screenwriter Max Landis (yes, related to another Landis) and director Josh Trank seem to understand that knowing the plot of a movie is only half of the picture sometimes.  Getting there can be the most important part.

This is a “found footage” type film, where the point of view is always from a camera that’s part of the actual movie.  Blah blah ever since Blair With there have been an excessive amount of films that have tried to use this style, with the majority being sketchy but a couple that stand out as applying the technique purposefully and effectively.  However, the main road block is that there’s always a point where you start to wonder – wouldn’t you stop filming now?  And putting some stupid commentary in there about how it’s in our nature to watch doesn’t excuse the script and film from essentially making countless concessions to adapt to having a camera in-scene at all times.

However… ‘Chronicle’ makes some of the smartest use of the style that I’ve seen.  It isn’t above tossing in those one-sentence explanations – Andrew (Dane DeHaan) explains to us (and his father) right from the start that he’s going to be filming everything from now on- but what ‘Chronicle’ did better than the rest was twofold: first, it actually develops and evolves it’s characters on screen. There’ enough meat to Andrew’s character – quiet, rage-filled, abused – that I can actually see someone of his type wanting to ‘document’ things, especially as they progressed.  The script offers some musings on how the camera acts as a barrier for Andrew, but it’s not an out-of-place observation, and it syncs so well with the way he enjoys just pointing the camera at himself, doing nothing but staring at it, and hitting record.

Secondly, and while it’s a bit disorienting at times, the other violation these styles of films make is breaking the convention by grabbing a shot from somewhere that doesn’t make much sense.  ‘Chronicle’ has no bones about hopping to any camera.  It makes a little bit of a shruggy excuse to film non-Andrew characters when Andrew’s not around by including a girl interest for another lead who happens to be filming insignificant things for her blog, but besides this dodgy inclusion, especially as we ramp up toward the climax, the hopping around from cell-phone to cell-phone camera to news camera to security cameras is insane, but really well done, and stays respectably within the limitations of the film.

So all that jive being said, what about the movie?

Andrew has a drunk for a father and a bedridden mother.  He doesn’t seem to have any real friends but isn’t your typical sensitive, quiet movie kid – he’s not an undercover genius, not an amazing artist.  He doesn’t have great comebacks to the insults hurtled at him at school.  He’s a shockingly real presentation of your quiet kid, elements from his home life equaling a lot of anger just underneath the surface.  He also has just enough money to get an old style VHS (it looks like) camera, and that’s where we pick up the story with him, setting to record his dad’s drunken abuse.  Well, carrying a camera around doesn’t do wonders for Andrew, but when he reluctantly attends a party with his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) , he’s roped by Matt and local school hero Steve (Micahel B. Jordan) into filming them climbing down a creepy hole in an abandoned field.

Would you climb down there?  Maybe not.  But again, ‘Chronicle’ makes me believe these characgters.  Steve is an all around nice guy but definitely fits the part of the showboat, first down the hole.  Matt is too cool for school, but actually wants to be just cool enough for school, so he follows.  An Andrew?  Well, these people actually asked for him to be around, so he might as well follow…

The kids get telekinetic powers from something they find in the hole.  It’s all fun and games, but as their powers get stronger… Well.  Andrew, perhaps, has been beaten down one too many times.

And ‘Chronicle’ gets fairly dark, which is impressive.  The ramping up of the powers and the progressively downward spin  of the tale all happens at a perfect pace to keep the viewer on board.

But, as I’ve already harped on, the characters are what sells this.  This is a movie about friendship and responsibility, not the powers.  It’s a fly-on-the-wall Batman, not Cloverfield.  Which makes the eventual payoff of these conflicts more meaningful and nerve-wracking.  As I mentioned at the start, the building up up up eventually means there’s going to be a down, and the film decidedly fizzles out right about when that happens.  I can’t claim to know what would’ve been better, for as dark as they took it – without making one character blindly good or evil – is impressive, but I’d be curious if there were plans to go even further at some point, a la some comics I can think of – Marvelman, The Kingdom.  There’s also something to be said for how much is compressed in this little space.  Ideally, the film would have more room to think on some matters – we don’t have to know exactly where the source of their powers came from, but I sense they would’ve wanted to investigate a little further than they do in the film.  And I found myself justifying the short-sightedness of some of the character’s decision, when, perhaps in a longer film, these decisions would’ve been made differently.  But I think these were sacrifices to keep things moving, and on the whole I approve.

Obviously, since I just blabbed on for nine years about it.  Please pay to go see this one.

Spoiler alert: This grey sky never appears in the movie.