Movie Review: Chronicle

Steve, Andrew, and Matt, respectively

            Non-label superhero movies usually turn out to be a boo-fest—I’m talking not DC or Marvel. Look at all the video games they ruin with bad adaptations and tell me I’m wrong (Max Payne, Judge Dredd, The Mario Bros., to name a few). And mockumentaries can turn out just as train-wreckish (Cloverfield, Apollo 18). However, take three teenagers, a weird thing underground that glows, and steady camera work and you have Chronicle, a not-too-shabby movie I actually rather enjoyed.

            The previews (as they ALWAYS do) promised us a good movie: a tale of intrigue and psychic coolness that would be mixed with angst so the target audience—teenagers—would like it, and maybe even adults, too…though probably not. What we got was a well-thought-out, imagination-bending, and sometimes heart-rending tale of three friends who discover a weird…thing together and are imbued with telekinetic prowess. The writing is to be commended. All of my questions—except one—were answered, there was no jump-to-this-scene-now cut-and-paste plot crap, the characters were believable and connectable, and the story moved at a nice pace, climaxing at a satisfyingly-long fight scene that ended one of the two ways I predicted and ending with a tragic sort of video log from one cousin to another. The circumstances of the anti-hero’s (he wasn’t really a villain) death turned out to be one of necessity, yet somehow you ended up wishing it could have been avoided anyway. Once Andrew named himself the “apex predator”, though, I knew it couldn’t bode well for him.

            Several unforeseen things threw me for a loop, and I looooooove that in a movie/story/plot/anything-with-writing-sort-of-thing. You ALWAYS want to be able to say “WHOA! I never saw that one coming!” There are things that can and should be predicted, but if your predictions are shaky, it’s likely—and good writing delivers this—that either 1) you missed the clues and will be completely blown away or 2) your predictions are only partially right and you’re astounded anyway. Chronicle gave me just that, and that’s rare in a teen-angst movie. Seriously.

            While the psychic action got a little Akira in some places (I half-expected Matt to start yelling out “TETSUO!”), the progression of character development and plot mad me forget my woes and enjoy the movie for what it was. Had this been a case of Apollo 18, I would have hounded it for the nearness to Katsuhiro Otomo’s work.

KANEDA!!!

            I half-expected to leave theater 9 disappointed, as I had been with a lot of the movies this winter. However, Chronicle gave me a reason to hope Hollywood hasn’t completely crapped the originality bed yet. The satisfying film gets 4 kernels out of 5.