Review of Chronicle (2012) by John T — 25 Jul 2013

Three high school buddies - Andrew, Matt and Steve - discover a glowing object buried in a hole, touch it, and discover they have telekinetic powers. Chronicle relies on the standard elements of a "found footage" movie: a theme of impending peril, relatively unknown actors and filmmakers, and a low budget. Unlike superior films of this genre such as Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Chronicle incorporates the footage from numerous cameras including hospital security cameras, helicopter cameras, television news crews, and store security and then shows it edited together to produce the movie. This at least mitigates the shortcoming that found footage movies have: the supposition that the cameras are permanently affixed to someone's head. Moreover, the director relied on the boy's telekinetic powers to levitate their handheld camera.

It starts off with some harmless practical jokes - getting stuffed bears to walk, moving cars in the parking lot - but since Andrew is the victim of bullying by his father and fellow students, it quickly descends into a morality play about the dangers of absolute power corrupting absolutely. This, quite expectedly, leads to the ultimate battle betwen Matt (representing good) and Andrew (representing evil).

The film has a lot of action sequences and at 84 minutes the movie is over before you realize that noting new was added to the genre.