Chronicling Chronicle

During one of the many recent snow storms that have continued to hound Colorado well into "spring," I watched last year's sci-fi film Chronicle. It's the story of three teens who encounter an object from space that imbues them with telekinetic powers, and how the exploration of those powers slowly corrupts one of them.

Oh, and it's a "found footage" movie. I have no problem with that conceit in general. The Blair Witch Project uncapped that particular well, but was itself quite good. There have been both disastrous and successful movies in the genre since then. Chronicle is one of the more interesting attempts at this... at least on paper. The idea that these teens would document the exploration of their own superpowers makes sense, and the movie even gets a fun twist out of the concept when one learns to be his own cameraman through the use of telekinesis.

And yet, ultimately, I believe the found footage conceit does the movie far more harm than good. It feels like the movie spends nearly as much time justifying why someone would continue to film things as it does trying to move its plot forward. And even spending so much time on justification, it still doesn't get there some of the time. It does make for a fun climactic battle at the end of the film, as assembled from cell phone and security camera footage from dozens of witnesses... but long before you reach that point, you're constantly asking yourself things like "why would you film yourself committing a crime?", "why is he wasting mental energy levitating a camera?", and so on. Thus, the film fails on a very basic suspension of disbelief, and when it's asking you to accept such fantastical things, it's truly hampered.

Still, the film isn't a total loss. There is good acting from a cast of mostly unknowns, and if you ignore the failed gymnastics of the found footage premise, the plot is fairly engaging. I suppose you can see why the writers felt they needed the twist in narrative approach, though; it isn't a particularly surprising or original story.

I've heard a few people say really good things about Chronicle, and I can see that within the movie. But for me it was quite difficult to overlook the negatives here. I give it a C+.