For three high school classmates who suddenly gain superpowers from a mysterious substance, the chronicle of their ordinary lives is about to take on extraordinary turn. Initially they use their powers to play innocent pranks on each other and people around them, but soon they gain confidence and learn to control their powers better to take on more difficult tasks. Their newfound sense of immortality and impunity will force them to evaluate their own morality to ultimately decide where to draw the line about how far they should go.
The ‘Found Footage’ genre is starting to become more of an annoyance these days, there are just so many of these films coming out and most of them are well what’s the best word to put it ‘crap’ but on the odd occasion a ripper of a film comes out that uses it to their advantage. I still remember back to ‘The Blair Witch Project’ back in 1999 which is pretty much where this whole ‘fad’ started now that movie had a bit of everything, suspense, horror and even a couple of laughs thrown in plus the film had what I feel is still one of the best marketing campaign’s ever. Now we have CHRONICLE which to me is one of the most entertaining and imaginative ‘found footage’ thrillers I have since Blair Witch.
The thing about CHRONICLE is for starters I love the title, what it basically means to the film is chronicling these three guys testing and building there new found power, like they could have come up with some other title but Chronicle sums it up really nice 60 minutes of the 83 minute film is basically that but then things go a bit darker and well out of control. I think since the guys have these powers the directors used it to their advantage like being able to move things with their mind, one of the guys figure out they can move the camera to shoot themselves instead of holding it, now that’s just a cracker of an idea!
Performance wise by all the guys it’s pretty solid! Alex Russell who plays Matt Garetty who is actually from Australia and we saw last year in the Perth Filmed ‘Wasted on the Young’ pulls out his American Accent and plays the part extremely well, Dan Dehaan who is actually pretty new to the film industry plays Andrew Detmer he’s plays the sort of ‘villain’ in the film but without going into spoiler territory he does have a pretty scarred upbringing as you see in the movie. DeHaan is quite believable in the role and personally I think it would have been quite hard especially the final 25 or so minutes so I take my hat off to him and lastly Michael B. Jordan who plays Steve, who we have seen in the 2001 film Hardball and George Lucas’s upcoming Red Tails, plays the role convincingly but I’m all about character development and would have liked to have seen a little bit more.
CHRONICLE is a great film, definitely one you can go watch on a boy’s night out. The last 20 minutes or so are that intense you’re just glued to the screen. Only thing I wish is that they cut the last 2 minutes out, you will know what I’m talking about when you see the film.
CHRONICLE is in cinemas now I give this film 4 out of 5 stars.