Flick Flak: Chronicle
Chronicle
Director: Josh Trank
With: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B Jordan
12A, 83mins
This little indie, found-footage film arrived out of nowhere, first with an attention-grabbing poster and then with a great trailer. Fantastic reviews followed, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing it.
Chronicle takes the traditional ‘superhero origins’ story and puts an original twist on it: three teenagers find something in a hole in the ground, a something which grants them telekinetic powers. They are Matt (pretentious and shallow), Steve (popular and charismatic), and Andrew, the troubled boy with the rough home life, whose decision to document his life on camera serves as the viewpoint for the film.
They screw around with their new-found abilities as any teenage boys would - practical jokes and perving at girls. That is, until Andrew, who seems able to use his powers more effectively, puts someone in the hospital, prompting the boys to establish some ground rules: no using the powers on living things, or in public, or in anger. Rules which are gradually, but eventually dramatically, flouted.
The film is an admirable attempt to do something original, with both the hand-held camera and superhero genres. The film is shot through a variety of different cameras - using several people’s recorders, as well as CCTV and police helicopter cameras to name just a few. The director finds license to be creative with camera angles too, as Andrew soon learns to levitate his camera for hands-free filming.
The characters are real enough to get behind and believe in, and the audience does feel sympathy for Andrew, with his abusive father and seriously ill mother. Chronicle is successful in hitting its emotional targets, whether they are the early light-hearted scenes or the later, escalating shocks. It’s also a film with the power to surprise; when you think you know what’s about to happen in a scene, often something… bigger happens.
For a film made on a $15 million budget, the special effects are not lacking. I always think that effects are more effective when seen through hand-held cameras (Cloverfield, The Last Exorcism, Rec.) and Chronicle benefits from the same thing. The ‘big’ moments are shocking rather than funny or clumsy, and there’s plenty of intelligence to back up the action. I particularly liked the fact that the boys’ powers have some kind of an effect on the cameras, so that we get a couple of seconds of buzzing to build suspense before something happens.
All in all, this wasn’t quite the 5-star stunner I’d read it was in some publications, but it is a thoroughly exciting, gripping attempt to take a fairly tired genre (or two) and do something different. Quite simply, it’s effective at everything it tries to do.
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