Chronicle

No, not the Creedance greatest hits compilation CD. Chronicle is about three high schoolers - Steve, Matt, and Andrew - finding something underground while at a party. The something gives them telekinetic powers, and we watch as they start off experimenting, mostly pranks or Jackass style nonsense. Gradually, their power increases and they're flying about. Then things start to go wrong, as one character finds that having cool powers hasn't magically gotten rid of all the lousy things in his life.

The movie is one of those "found footage" types, where everything is observed through cameras that are in world, as opposed to the sort of omnipresent camera we watch a movie like Jaws through, where characters are unaware of being observed by it. Most of the footage comes courtesy of Andrew, who purchased a camera and chose to take it with him everywhere. My guess is he either wanted documentation of his life, or he wanted to force people to think about how they behaved towards him before they acted. Other sources - convenience store security cams - are used as appropriate. I wasn't entirely clear on whether we're watching the story as it unfolds, or we're law enforcement or whoever trying to piece things together after the fact. I lean towards the former because I'm not sure otherwise how we'd see the footage from the first camera, since it was lost down in the hole. It's not a deal breaker, only something that occurred to me.

I found the film kind of predictable, but still enjoyable. The early scenes, where they're just screwing around with their powers, I thought all three actors did a good job of showing how much fun they were having. The flying parts, especially, conveyed how much fun that would be, but also how potentially terrifying it could be. Given my extreme distaste from unsteady heights, there's no way I could do that, I'd spend the entire time terrified I'd forget to use my powers and fall to my death.

And it builds the friendship between the three of them well. Dane DeHaan captures Andrew's mix of hopefulness and anxiety, that fear about putting yourself out there and getting humiliated. And Michael B. Jordan plays Steve as someone who is genuinely friendly. He's not a smug jock, he's not a jerk who's toying with Andrew. But at the same time, because he's popular and finds it easy to talk with people, he can't really understand what eats away at Andrew. Andrew won't come out and really say why he wants to fly to Tibet rather than Maui, and Steve just doesn't quite get it on his own, so there's always a divide there, despite Steve's best intentions.

I think it's worth renting, or purchasing if you can get it cheap enough. Not a must see, but not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.