Review: Chronicle

The best thing about Chronicle, a found-footage style mock-doc that follows three teenage boys who develop telekinetic superpowers after encountering a glowing (alien?) mass in an underground cave, is that it treats its protagonists as actual humans. This is an essential, but all too often forgotten component of the effective superhero film, because the fantastical elements of the genre must be grounded in reality in order to not come across as hollow spectacle. Screenwriter Max Landis (John’s son) achieves this grounding not by making the trio particularly three-dimensional, but rather by allowing them to behave as real teenagers would, provided such extraordinary powers. Andrew (Dane DeHaan), Matt (Alex Russell), and Steve (Michael B. Jordan) aren’t concerned with world domination; instead, they use their powers to scare a kid by levitating a stuffed animal in the toy aisle, put on an unbelievable act at the school talent show, and fly high in the sky. Needless to say, they film themselves doing all of this – a coincidence designed to make the found-footage style possible, but not an entirely contrived one given their generation’s openness to self-disclosure.

For the most part, the first two acts of the film play as light (but smart) comedy – a welcome rarity in this genre. The best passages are the most existential – those that feature the guys marveling at their newfound powers just for the hell of it, not questioning how or why they got them. The effortless rapport between the three, who seem stoned on their own awesomeness, is infectious, thanks to good writing and amiable performances. The only scenes that feel out of place are those featuring Andrew’s troubled home life – his mom is dying of cancer and his disability-collecting father treats him abusively.

Unfortunately, Andrew’s family problems only factor more prominently into the third act, which finds him growing increasingly willing to exploit his powers out of anger towards his mom’s plight. It becomes clear that Landis is reaching for the obligatory disaster-laden climax in a film that would have been better off without one. (Easier said than done in Hollywood, certainly, but given how many other genre conventions the film subverts, it’s not unreasonable to think it could have gotten away with a radically different ending.) And while there is something to admire in the go-for-broke, interjection-laden lunacy of Chronicle’s finale, it creates more problems than just the ill-fitted tonal shift. For instance, as the action heightens, views from multiple cameras—security cameras, police cameras, cell-phone cameras—are intercut with that of Andrew’s. This implies that a third-party made the film, which raises a host of questions that it never answers (among them: What the hell was the thing in the cave, exactly? What happened in the aftermath of the events?). Given the refreshing originality of its first 45 minutes, it’s a shame that Chronicle ultimately succumbs to being another dumb superhero movie in the end.

* * *

Chronicle (2012, USA). Produced by John Davis, James Dodson, and Adam Schroeder. Directed by Josh Trank. Written for the screen by Max Landis. Story by Josh Trank and Max Landis. Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw, and Bo Petersen. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 83 minutes.