Review: ‘Chronicle’ is Surprisingly Good for an Angsty Found Footage Teen Film

Chron­i­cle is a sci-fi thriller about three teenage boys who come into con­tact with a strange, radioac­tive sub­stance found in a well near their Seat­tle home, and weeks later dis­cover that they’ve devel­oped telekinesis-like abilities.

The story cen­ters on angsty high­schooler Andrew Det­mer, who begins doc­u­ment­ing his trou­bled life with video.  He con­stantly gets picked on, his dad is an abu­sive drunk, and his mother lay dying of can­cer.  It doesn’t get much worse than Andrew’s life.  And so he finds solace behind the cam­era, con­stantly film­ing at every oppor­tu­nity (much to the annoy­ance of his friends and classmates).

The first part of the film is pretty much what you’d expect: through Andrew’s lens, we get a good intro­duc­tory glimpse of his life, his friends, and his prob­lems. About 12 min­utes in, every­thing changes after he and his friends Matt and Steve stum­ble across the mys­te­ri­ous well.  From there after­ward the boys begin doc­u­ment­ing their pow­ers on video, test­ing the lim­its of their abil­i­ties with gen­uine awe at what they’re capa­ble of, often in humor­ous ways (for instance play­ing pranks on unsus­pect­ing peo­ple).  With the new­found sense of belong­ing that Matt and Steve pro­vide, Andrew’s per­sonal life begins to trans­form as well, gain­ing more con­fi­dence and con­trol in his social life even when things are falling apart at home.

And this is where Chron­i­cle  really gets inter­est­ing. Rather than focus­ing too much on the “Hey, look at my awe­some super pow­ers, isn’t this cool?” aspect of Andrew’s story, the film takes a much darker turn as we learn that Andrew’s inten­tions and moti­va­tions aren’t exactly pure.  Tired of being bul­lied and his mis­er­able home life, Andrew beings to rec­og­nize that hav­ing such power also means hav­ing the abil­ity to pun­ish those who would do him harm.  And power in the hands of some­one who is so obvi­ously dis­turbed is a very dan­ger­ous thing.

The film’s unspo­ken ques­tion: if you sud­denly devel­oped super pow­ers, what kind of per­son would you  be?

Shock­u­men­tary hor­ror films like Blair Witch and Clover­field that favor the shaky, first-person hand­cam method to tell the story as if it were “real” footage usu­ally come across as highly unbe­liev­able because, hon­estly, what kind of fuck­ing idiot would keep the cam­era rolling in ter­ri­fy­ing life-or-death sit­u­a­tions? (For what it’s worth,  REC  was one of the only films to get the ‘found footage’ for­mula right.)  But In a non-horror film like  Chron­i­cle,  the found footage style makes more sense to me. In the age of YouTube, I have no prob­lems believ­ing that a bunch of bored teenagers who sud­denly develop super pow­ers would want to film all the awe­some things they can do.

That’s why I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how well Chron­i­cle  works. Direc­tor Josh Trank, who is only 26 years old, by the way, is to be com­mended for putting his unique twist on the found footage trend with this direc­to­r­ial debut. Rather than mind­lessly mimic the first-person shoot­ing style like so many other films have done, he cre­ates char­ac­ter sit­u­a­tions that allow for dif­fer­ent film­ing per­spec­tives, bet­ter cam­era angles, and more inter­est­ing frames of reference.

For exam­ple, there’s a pretty insane action sequence toward the end of the film where we get to wit­ness the events unfold through traf­fic and secu­rity cam­eras posi­tioned all around down­town Seat­tle. In some other cases, how­ever, it felt like the film­ing sit­u­a­tions were far too con­trived.  But over­all I think the direc­tion was appro­pri­ate and var­ied enough so that you don’t feel like you’re trudg­ing through loads of raw footage wait­ing for some­thing cool to hap­pen (fuck you, Para­nor­mal Activ­ity ).  Cool stuff def­i­nitely hap­pens in this movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can promise there are some fan­tas­tic “WTF” moments that come out of nowhere, and awe­some action sequences that must be seen to be believed.

I believe Chron­i­cle  is an amaz­ing achieve­ment in low-budget film­mak­ing.  If you can put aside your expec­ta­tions of what found footage films are typ­i­cally like and just let your­self get immersed in the story, this movie can be a lot of fun.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.

Meet the Morning Glories

No, I’m not talk­ing about the chick flick star­ring Rachel McAdams and Har­ri­son Ford.  Morn­ing Glo­ries is a new comic book series from Image, and it kicks much ass.  Story cre­ator Nick Spencer describes it as ” Run­aways meets LOST .” I have to admit, that got my atten­tion right away.

“Morn­ing Glory Acad­emy is one of the most pres­ti­gious prep schools in the coun­try. But behind it’s hal­lowed doors, some­thing sin­is­ter and deadly lurks. When six bril­liant but trou­bled new stu­dents arrive, they find them­selves trapped and des­per­ately seek­ing answers in a place where noth­ing is what it seems to be.”

So far, it feels a lit­tle bit like if the kids from Cruel Inten­tions attended Sun­ny­dale High, minus the mon­sters.  There’s plenty of mys­tery, the super­nat­ural, and teen angst served up LOST style.  Joe Eisma’s art­work is smooth and vivid, and really brings the stu­dents  of Morn­ing Glory Acad­mey to life.

The char­ac­ters seemed a bit arche­typal at first, but I quickly got over that when I real­ized how much fun I was hav­ing just flip­ping through the pages. Besides, how can you not love first impres­sions like these:

I can already see this comic turn­ing into a movie or TV show.  Despite it being a blend of very famil­iar ter­ri­tory, it has enough style and per­son­al­ity to stand on its own, and more impor­tantly, it’s get­ting rave reviews across the comicverse.

Totally Emo Movie Heroes

There’s been a dis­turb­ing trend in Hol­ly­wood over the last cou­ple of years: inva­sion of the emos.  Aparently we girls like our movie heroes hot, angry, and whiny.  For what­ever rea­son, the hot male lead + pent-up angst for­mula seems to be work­ing, because emo sells.  All of the spec­i­mens listed here can typ­i­cally be found star­ing soul-searchingly out from the pages of Tiger­beat, or star­ring unwill­ingly in the steamy chap­ters of Mary Sue fanfics writ­ten by obsessed teenage girls.

Edward Cullen

‘Twi­light’ 2008

Most emo line:
“I don’t have the strength to stay away from you any­more.”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A well-tailored cus­tom pea­coat.

Rec­og­niz­able by his brood­ing stares, per­fectly disheveled hair and stalker ten­den­cies, Edward Cullen is a prod­uct of the roman­tic fan­tasies of 30-something author Stephanie Meyer, who would like you to believe he’s a dan­ger­ous vam­pire despite not drink­ing human blood and hav­ing no fangs.  Edg­ing out Buffy’s Angel in “the vam­pire who wants to be good” mar­ket, Edward Cullen is a vampy hero who spends the major­ity of his time obnox­iously tor­tur­ing him­self over his human love inter­est, the per­pet­ual damsel-in-distress Bella Swan.  Super­fi­cially played by Robert Pat­tin­son, who never read the books and never misses an oppor­tu­nity to make fun of his own sculpted-browed character.

Harry Potter

‘Harry Pot­ter and the Pris­oner of Azk­a­ban’ 2004

Most emo line:
“HE WAS THEIR FRIEND!!!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
An invis­i­bil­ity cloak, to hide his spon­ta­neous fits of cry­ing.

There is per­haps no hero more emo than boy-wizard Harry Pot­ter, who, among other things, strug­gles with school, girls, dead par­ents, abu­sive rel­a­tives, and an evil dark wiz­ard who con­stantly tries to mur­der him.  In a way, his emo-ness is prob­a­bly the most jus­ti­fied.  Some of Harry’s favorite activ­i­ties include mouthing off to teach­ers and Slytherins, alien­at­ing his two best friends, star­ing long­ingly at pretty Hog­warts girls, and wal­low­ing in the “nobody under­stands me” vari­ety of self-pity.  Played by Daniel Rad­cliffe, whose act­ing (thank­fully) seems to be get­ting bet­ter with each movie.

Anakin Skywalker

‘Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith’ 2005

Most emo line:
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A lightsaber, for mur­der­ing Jedi chil­dren.

Bet­ter known as Darth Vader, Anakin Sky­walker is the tragic anti­hero of the Star Wars uni­verse.  Played by a young and vir­ile Hay­den Chris­tensen, Darth Vader’s youth is a far cry away from the crusty old white man unmasked in the orginal Episode VI.  Unfor­tu­nately Christensen’s act­ing kinda sucks, so his ver­bal tran­si­tion to the dark side is often ripe with unin­ten­tional humor.  Anakin’s favorite hob­bies: dis­agree­ing with the Jedi Coun­cil, chillin’ with Darth Sid­i­ous, brood­ing over visions of Padme dying (then later help­ing the process along by chok­ing her—with his MIND), and whin­ing because he wasn’t bestowed the title of Jedi Mas­ter.  Now that I think about it, most evil over­lords act pretty emo, don’t they? I urge you to rec­og­nize the warn­ing signs.

The Phan­tom of the Opera

‘The Phan­tom of the Opera’ 2004

Most emo line:
“The world showed no com­pas­sion to me!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A mask that hides half of his hideous face.

Despite being 50% bru­tally hot and hav­ing a tremen­dous singing voice, the Phan­tom, an eter­nal pes­simist, refuses to rec­og­nize his inner beauty and instead uses his defor­mity as his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for mur­der­ing, steal­ing, and of course, stalk­ing the beau­ti­ful Chris­tine Daae.  But it’s not actor Ger­ard Butler’s fault.  Gas­ton Leroux’s iconic Phan­tom of the Opera, once a ruth­less and fear­some char­ac­ter, has been emas­cu­lated into the whin­ing, cry­ing, opera-singing emo kid most peo­ple are famil­iar with today, thanks to Broad­way leg­end Andrew Lloyd Weber.  

Spider-Man

‘Spider-Man 3′ 2007

Most emo line:
“I don’t need your help!“

Favorite emo acces­sory:
His emo flip hair­cut.  

As if Peter Parker wasn’t emo enough—you know, cry­ing about his dead Uncle Ben and pin­ing over Mary Jane—in Spider-Man 3, Toby Macguire gets what can only best be described as an extreme emo makeover, ruin­ing an oth­er­wise decent third install­ment of the block­buster Mar­vel franchise.

Futher­more, WTF is this?