Chronicle

Reviewed by Danny the Demented
Updated 8 February 2012

Great, another film with the hand-held-camera gimmick that is supposed to make you feel like you are RIGHT THERE with the characters. When was the last time this gimmick worked? Seriously, when? And don’t you dare say "Blair Witch Project" because I will kick your teeth in.

"Chronicle" tells the story of a troubled teenager named Andrew who has an ailing mother and an alcoholic father and is a social outcast. To make matters worse, he goes around videotaping everything (great job genius! way to NOT drawn attention to yourself). One fateful night, Andrew, his cousin Matt and the popular kid on campus Steve encountered a meteor-like glowing object in a hole and BAM! all three of them developed telekinetic powers. The trio became fast friends and lived happily ever after.......only not so much. After a series of mischief and silly teenager foolery, one of them went out of control with the new found power (guess which one? surprised? yeah me neither) and tragedy is the word. This film is somewhat like Heroes (Heroes Lite?), only more annoying and less mysterious.


Found footage genre sucks. There, I said it. Filmmakers gotta understand that people go to the theater for a reason: because the quality of films is SUPPOSED to be better than your old-fashion homemade bar mitzvah video. We pay for coherent storytelling and professional camera works. Why would I pay to see a movie that looks like my aunt shot it with her tiny V8? Even if you have an amazing script (Chronicle doesn’t), found footage style just limits the potential of the story because you are actually NOT allowed to move the camera around like a pro can. Within the genre, you are bound by the limitation of having to move the lenses like a freaking amateur. I thought this would've been obvious, my gosh do I have to explain everything to you people?

The acting is uniformly good. Dane DeHaan as Andrew is a convincing troubled soul. He is like a poor man's Michael Pitt and that is a compliment. Michael B Jordan is an excellent choice to play the popular Steve and Alex Russel gives a believable performance as the caring cousin Matt. But the acting, while good, aren't enough to save the film due to its fundamentally flawed technique (found footage genre sucks! wait I said that already didn’t I?). And more importantly, none of them possess enough star power to carry this film. Actually there are NO star powers in this film, zero, nada. The only time no star power works is if you have an exceptional script (like Clerk, you know, before Kevin Smith forgot how to write an interesting screenplay). That's not the case here, sadly.

Chronicle wasn’t a bore but it was bore-ish; a few exciting scenes here and there but never enough to really pull you into what's happening on screen. The downfall of the protagonist is predictable and the final confrontation wasn’t much of a confrontation at all. It ended abruptly and just as well, because I had a date at Burger King and that is a far better thing to do. My name is Danny and I endorse this message.