Chronicle

Or "Heathers, if it starred teenage boys with super powers."


This movie is saddled with an unfortunate title–unfortunate because I had seen trailers for it and knew I wanted to see it, but kept forgetting the name.


It's also weighed down by the eye-rolling contrivance that one of the characters is filming all of the events in the movie. Thanks for nothing, Blair Witch Project. But if you make it past the first twenty minutes or so, Chronicle swiftly becomes a breathtaking film–visually and aurally stunning and emotionally wrenching.


Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) is a shy high-school loser with a videocamera, an abusive father, a dying mother, and an alpha male cousin, Matt (Alex Russell) who feels compelled to hang out with him but clearly doesn't relish the job. 


At a party, Andy, Matt and student-council president Steve (Michael B. Jordan) find an alien-artifact Maguffin. It quickly becomes clear that the encounter has given them super powers, and we watch the trio's sophomoric glee as they use their telekinetic powers to pull adolescent pranks, and their genuine joy as they use their newly found ability to fly to play football in the clouds and hang out having incredibly awkward conversations on top of the Space Needle. While I wasn't fond of the found-footage conceit, I did find myself amazed at how much more interesting the special effects seemed when melded with footage that wasn't quite so slick. In that respect it reminded me a little of Neill Blomkamp's District 9 (and ironically, Chronicle was also shot in South Africa).


As I watched this unfold, I was struck by how much more feasible this superhero-origin story seems. If a sixteen-year-old boy was able to move things with his mind and fly, would his first impulse really be to put on a colorful costume and nab crooks?


From the beginning it's clear that of the three, Andy is the best at mastering his new abilities. One of the first things he does is learn to levitate his camera, which measurably improves the movie from a visual standpoint. At first he just basks in the respect he gets from Matt and Steve, and we cheer him on as he finds the strength to confront his dirtbag father. Gradually, Andy becomes the alpha male. Watching the teenage dominance pyramid invert is a barrel of monkeys.


It's only at this point that the real genius of Chronicle becomes apparent. In most superhero movies, an external threat would materialize and the new superheroes would save the earth. In Chronicle, the real threat turns out to be within. We realize that the source of Andy's power is actually the explosive rage that he has spent years repressing, and now that he's more powerful than anybody he knows, there's no reason for him to keep repressing it. As his mother gasps and wheezes frighteningly in the next room (some of the best sound design I've ever heard), Andy dies inside too.


All it takes is one brief Carrie moment, one public embarrassment he'll never live down, to snap him. As the film escalates, the visual effects up their game, as well--Chronicle is a $12 million movie that feels like it cost ten times that much.


Maybe the most interesting conclusion of Chronicle, in the end, is that all boys turn into their fathers.