Chronicle

I last saw this film over a decade ago, and it was one of my earliest introductions to the first-person POV scene. I also vividly remember being impressed by it, so much so that I kept thinking about the story and its characters for weeks afterwards.

It had definitively left its mark, and seeing this again after eleven years, my impression seems not to have changed even slightly. I loved this movie back in my childhood, and that same admiration has carried to the present times, as it seems.

Albeit It hurts to see this being film so underrated, this certainly deserves more love. It is one of the most overlooked as well as underappreciated science fiction features of the last decade!

P. S. Dane DeHaan as Andrew was freaking incredible here, one of the most effective Anti-Hero parts ever written and played on screen, period.

One day a loner kid whose mother is dying and his injured former-firefighter dad abuses him decides to film everything. That ostracizes him more from him peers because he runs around everywhere with some giant camera on this shoulder.

After a party his philosophizing cousin and another friend ask him to film what they found- a large perfectly circular hole in the ground. They jump into it and follow along the cave to find some alien looking giant glowing mineral. Something happens and the the filming is interrupted.

When the filming continues after some time we find them in the backyard controlling a baseball with their minds. Since the incident, they've developed telekinesis. At first with small objects, then larger ones, then themselves. They take their powers public bothering innocent people in stores and parking lots. Then they lean how to levitate and eventually fly.

When the poor loner kid's mom is one the verge of dying, the kid puts on a protective suit and tries to rob a gas station to get meds for his mom. On his way out, the attendant shoots at him; an explosion ensues and the kid catches on fire. He ends up in the hospital. Even there, and after the mom's death, the father will blame him and try to abuse him. The kid loses it completely. Having realized he's an apex predator and that the strong destroy the weak, he's now ready to unleash his powers and destroy all who get in his way. It's left to his cousin to try and stop him.

Chronicle overall has a good idea. It's entertaining to watch the kids develop and tame their powers and experimenting with them out there in the world. The filming is part POV, part third person because fortunately, the kid learns to control cameras and has them swarming around him. Thankfully, even when he has his old camera, the quality of the footage is excellent- unlike those poor bastards in horror movies who are forever condemned to film stuff in dismal quality grainy video. So at least that makes the POV stuff tolerable. But Chronicle retains the weaknesses of that kind of movie. It's boring at times, the portrayal of relationships overall is pretty poor- the relationship between the cousin and some girl is just awful, and eventually you end up with people just screaming at each other. Still, the entertaining aspects outweigh the negatives and this movie offers something we don't see often.

I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this film. Excellent directing, screenplay, cinematography and editing. Casting and performances were perfect, especially Dane DeHaan, who's screen presence is incredible in this film. The simplistic teen-target audience I understand, but I would've liked this to be a bit more mature. Still, a nice little gem and a well deserved 8/10 from me.

The next in a long line of "found footage" flicks that have been flooding our cinemas over the last few years, Chronicle breaks free of the usual constraints within that sub genre to concoct a truly memorable sci-fi thriller. Retracing the steps of three teenage friends who are gifted with telekinesis after a chance encounter with something (intelligently, the movie never stipulates what exactly), the story focuses on the varying paths they take with their new found talent, but not until they have had some juvenile fun with it first. This is an amazingly accomplished debut feature for writer-director Josh Trank (who co-penned the script with Max "son of John" Landis); his technical veracity is utterly mind-blowing – especially when you consider the shoestring funds he had to work with – and his narrative pacing is impeccable. The icing on the already yummy cake is the marvellous CGI that allows our protagonists to fly, crush cars and stop baseballs in mid air – all seamlessly and photo-realistically. Chronicle is a tremendous achievement in low-budget, big-concept filmmaking.

Chronicle is an engaging offspring of two very separate genres. Reality based horror / thriller movies and Super Hero's. Never would you have imagined a super hero origins movie being shot with a hand-held camera. They are often related to high octane action sequences and graphics and CGI. Well that thing doesn't change here either but the treatment is creative and thoroughly engaging. If suppose paranormal activity and any super hero movie were to mate, their offspring would have been called "Chronicle".

I think by now the "handheld camera" trick in films is becoming a little stale. Sure, it can help smaller productions and can make some films visually spectacular. However, it seems that it is used in way too many films, usually horror flicks at that. Chronicle, however, is nothing less than a masterpiece at not only the "found footage" style, but is also a brand new way of making a superhero movie, mainly because the people it centers on are far from heroes anyway. They are portrayed as everyday people. People with real problems and psychologies. All the larger than life characters of other sci fi or super hero movie is nowhere to be seen here.

Read the rest of the review at : http://devlifeintechnicolor.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/chronicle-a- realistic-take-on-sci-fi-action/