Movie Review #12 Chronicle (2012)

- A found footage film where we see it live... not found.

I should explain the subheading first. The entire movie is seen through multiple cameras all of which are cameras being held by people within the movie or security cameras or the like. Almost every camera is fully explained within the confines of the movie so it's like the viewer is in the movie. I vomit in the general direction of that idea. Blair Witch did it fine insomuch as it was the first time that kind of thing was done and was financially successful. Since then all attempts at the genre of “found footage” has basically killed my will to live. I didn't know this would be a shaky camera experience prior to movie start, had I, I might not have sat down to watch it. I lie, I was always going to give it a whirl. I give things too many chances to impress me and this was no different. I mean, Max Landis of the YouTube hit “The Death and Return of Superman” wrote it. While I didn't really get a kick out of that video because I knew most of the information, it was probably the most concise and humorous video explaining what in the world happened during that Superman arc. For that I must give him more writing credit than most of the writers of big comic publishers.

Unfortunately what I didn't know is that Landis is just as incapable of writing a good back story or decent character development than anyone else in the comic book industry. The pacing of the entire movie is way off-kilter and by the end of it I didn't count one scene that was fun-loving, exciting, emotional or gripping. The movie just sort of happened in front of my eyes and I couldn't leave because I'm an all or none kind of person.

The main characters of the movie are three pretty generic stereotypes. We have the pasty white loner guy who has a troubled home and school life (played by Dane DeHaan), a lazy stoner (though drug use is never seen but implied) high school student (played by Alex Russell) and to round out the three, the everyone loves him, everyone is jealous of him class-president black high school student (played by Michael B. Jordan). Minus a little more detail for the loner kid, that's the character development I'm afraid. And what does the audience do for 60 minutes of the 1 hour and 29 minute movie? They watch these three reprobates do stupid generic teenage garbage. They make a stuffed bear dance in a toy store to scare a kid, they throw dishes on the ground, they move a parked car so the owner thinks the car was stolen, they learn how to fly, they make a shopping cart run away. They own their talent day, they win at beer pong and finally one of them rams a car off the road.

That's where the pacing goes a bit off. Ramming the car off the road isn't at the end of their hi-jinx it is the middle. They have a good proper sit down of setting rules and how they need to behave and then finish up their hi-jinx before any real sort of conflict happens. We all know there is going to be conflict but we're just sitting there waiting for it. I'm not going to say it was boring but it was a bit tedious. We all understood what was going on as they just kept showing the same style of sequences repeatedly for the less than intuitive audience.

When I brood I crush cars with my hands not my mind.

I think this movie would have benefited from actually being filmed as a B rated hero-comedy spoof because sometimes it took itself too seriously and it didn't work out well. I think the movie is geared toward 16 year olds who aren't really into comic books but who are into teenage angst and devil-may-care attitude toward life. The plain and simple of this is the movie dragged on long after they ran out of script and padded the middle of the movie to the best of their ability – not well. This movie has no right sharing a shelf with other superhero based movies.

This painful movie got a 2/10.

PS: If you have anything else to do than to watch this movie, do it.