Movie Review - ‘Chronicle’

By Bob Garver

I typ­i­cally choose my movie for the week by guess­ing which one will do the most busi­ness. Every now and then I get it wrong. Last year I wrote a review of the mis­er­able “Sanc­tum” instead of “The Room­mate,” which did much bet­ter. I made a sim­i­lar mis­take this past week­end, but I caught it just in time. I thought that the star power of Daniel Rad­cliffe would carry “The Woman in Black” to the #1 spot at the week­end box office. I saw the lemon on Fri­day and spent the bet­ter part of the day Sat­ur­day won­der­ing how I could stretch “not that scary” into a full-length arti­cle. While pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, I caught a tid­bit on an enter­tain­ment web­site say­ing that it was actu­ally “Chron­i­cle” that had the biggest audi­ence Fri­day night.

I scram­bled to make it to an 11 p.m. show­ing. My reward was one of the best and most orig­i­nal films I’ve seen in a good long while.

The film is com­prised of found footage, a film­ing style usu­ally reserved for hor­ror films like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Para­nor­mal Activ­ity.” It’s a refresh­ing change of pace to see it used in a sci-fi action movie like this. In a few weeks we’ll get “Project X” a film that applies the found footage style to raunchy com­edy. The style is either going to have a bright future or get old quickly. For now I like it, it gives the film a feel­ing of unfor­giv­ing thor­ough­ness and accuracy.

The main char­ac­ter of the film is Andrew (Dane DeHaan), an awk­ward teenager who gets bul­lied both at school and at home. His only friend is his cousin Matt (Alex Rus­sell) who seems to only stick with him out of fam­ily obligation.

He buys a cam­era to doc­u­ment his life, which is just one more thing that makes every­body think he’s a weirdo. But it turns out to be use­ful in mak­ing a con­nec­tion with pop­u­lar kid Steve (Michael B. Jor­dan). Steve has found a mys­te­ri­ous crater in the woods, and wants Matt and Andrew with his cam­era to explore it with him. The three find them­selves in an under­ground cave where they hap­pen upon an alien edi­fice. Next thing they know they’re some­how out of the cave and they’ve devel­oped tele­ki­netic superpowers.

The char­ac­ters are teenagers, so of course they ini­tially use their pow­ers for imma­ture things. They play pranks, wow their friends at the school tal­ent show, and of course, pick up girls. Andrew makes his cam­era float, which means that he doesn’t always have to be out of the pic­ture while film­ing. The group also dis­cov­ers that they can fly and go soar­ing above the clouds until pesky air­planes interfere.

The sequences of them fly­ing for the first time are the most mem­o­rable of the film, but the other scenes where they have fun exploit­ing their pow­ers could use some trimming.

Things turn dark when Andrew real­izes that he can use his pow­ers to dom­i­nate oth­ers. He gets back at peo­ple who have bul­lied him, robs and mugs oth­ers, and even com­mits a mur­der. Soon he’s a mon­ster, spread­ing ter­ror through­out met­ro­pol­i­tan Seat­tle includ­ing a midair bat­tle with Matt at the tip of the Space Nee­dle. Andrew makes for a very com­pelling vil­lain, espe­cially since we’re able to fol­low him from his bleak beginnings.

“Chron­i­cle” is noth­ing less than a highly enjoy­able film. It does some things that I’ve never seen before and now am glad to have expe­ri­enced. The film is in not yet part of a fran­chise, but I imag­ine we’ll get at least one sequel where we find out more about the extrater­res­trial entity that allows the char­ac­ters to have pow­ers. It’s a bit scary to think that I nearly missed out on “Chron­i­cle” but the fact that it was a pleas­ant sur­prise makes it all the more special.

Three and a Half Stars out of Five.

“Chron­i­cle” is rated PG-13 for intense action and vio­lence, the­matic mate­r­ial, some lan­guage, sex­ual con­tent, and teen drink­ing. Its run­ning time is 83 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Feb 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.