Chronicle is a surprisingly good film, despite a name that may as well be Working Title, a home camera/found footage conceit stretched to the point of ridiculousness, and dialogue by Max "Son of John" Landis that's almost too realistic. Who are the least articulate people on Earth? High school boys! Let's make a movie about 'em acting all naturalist and stuff. But they have superpowers.
Also the theme of the film is Poor People Are Terrible. But it's still a pretty good movie.
Anyway, Andrew is awkward, scrawny, picked on at school and abused at home by his alcoholic former firefighter dad. (Now dad drinks and collects tiny disability checks and watches bass fishing on TV and shouts and yells, like all poor white men in American films do. They're Just Awful, you know.) Only sainted mom, who is dying of Cancer of the Everything, loves little Andrew. Philosophical cousin Matt tolerates the Andrew and drives him to school for his daily round of being smacked upside the head. Not enough of a target, Andrew decides to bring a video camera with him wherever he goes, like a put-upon kid from a movie or something.
Matt brings Andrew to a rave, where we also get to meet wealthy black BMOC Steve. The three investigate a mysterious hole in the ground—if you've ever been to what 2012 high schoolers think a rave is, the hole would sound pretty good to you too—and encounter some weird pseudo-organic crystalline thing that glows and has pulsing veins and gives boys who hang out near it telekinesis.
The boys take their newfound powers to the mall and discover that the more they use them, the more powerful they get. Soon they're performing guerrilla valet parking, and then in some of the more delightful and inventive camera's eye scenes, actually flying. There's a good bit where they all dress warmly in gloves and shell coats and can't hear one another at all.
But the virginal Andrew still gets picked on, even after he does a magic act for the school talent show. A pink-haired girl thinks "magic is so hot" (nobody thinks magic is THAT hot!!!) but Andrew has drunk too much and pukes on her before he can Become a Man.
(Fun fact: The pink-haired girl and Andrew are an item in real life, and there is a sense of "hey, let's put on a show" in the film that bleeds through.)
Dad's also very upset because Mom's Stop Me From Screaming In Agony While Keeping Me In Agony pills are like seven hundred bucks a bottle, so he drinks nineteen beers and yells a lot. There's a death, and a funeral, and Matt is very busy with his new girlfriend Casey who also happens to have the hobby of taping everything despite not being an ugly weirdo, becausewe need some scenes of Matt without Andrew for God's sake she has a blog.
Don't you just love blogs that feature footage of teen girls answering the door or hanging out at her younger brother's seventh birthday party? I can't get enough of them. That's why I'm still on Livejournal.
Anyway, magic powers are great for things like crushing automobiles and flying around and killing spiders, so surely Andrew can just float a few pills into his pocket, right? Yes, right! But no, because Poor People are Terrible, so it's time to Occupy Seattle with a Black Bloc of one. Andrew is conveniently burned over half his body because ugly==evil and Matt's a dreamboat whose own class anxieties and personal insecurities have now all safely been poured into Casey's vagina. (Anxieties and insecurities are stored in semen, btw, thus the insulting term "wanker." Andrew's conflation of semen and vomit is both his queering and his undoing.) Matt does a little TCB, but is properly anguished about it, and the end is quite interesting, actually. Chronicle shifts from SF to teen romp to horror pretty quickly and expertly, and the home-cam conceit does serve to keep the budget down and the optical effects cool. Matt and Andrew's occasionally close, occasionally distant relationship is very believable, as is the art direction around Andrew's house. The domestic stuff hits melodrama at just the wrong moment, but by then the film is pretty much over, so it's cool.
Plus, like most horror movies, the Terrible Person in Chronicle can be counter-read as a tragic hero. (The coda with Matt talking to the camera actually helps cement this.) Why do you think acne-covered teen nerds love Jason and Freddie? Yes, they are terrible. Yes, we are terrible. And formidable. So there's a dual message—Poor People Are Terrible is one.
Rich People, Beware Your Own Complacency is two.
Also the theme of the film is Poor People Are Terrible. But it's still a pretty good movie.
Anyway, Andrew is awkward, scrawny, picked on at school and abused at home by his alcoholic former firefighter dad. (Now dad drinks and collects tiny disability checks and watches bass fishing on TV and shouts and yells, like all poor white men in American films do. They're Just Awful, you know.) Only sainted mom, who is dying of Cancer of the Everything, loves little Andrew. Philosophical cousin Matt tolerates the Andrew and drives him to school for his daily round of being smacked upside the head. Not enough of a target, Andrew decides to bring a video camera with him wherever he goes, like a put-upon kid from a movie or something.
Matt brings Andrew to a rave, where we also get to meet wealthy black BMOC Steve. The three investigate a mysterious hole in the ground—if you've ever been to what 2012 high schoolers think a rave is, the hole would sound pretty good to you too—and encounter some weird pseudo-organic crystalline thing that glows and has pulsing veins and gives boys who hang out near it telekinesis.
The boys take their newfound powers to the mall and discover that the more they use them, the more powerful they get. Soon they're performing guerrilla valet parking, and then in some of the more delightful and inventive camera's eye scenes, actually flying. There's a good bit where they all dress warmly in gloves and shell coats and can't hear one another at all.
But the virginal Andrew still gets picked on, even after he does a magic act for the school talent show. A pink-haired girl thinks "magic is so hot" (nobody thinks magic is THAT hot!!!) but Andrew has drunk too much and pukes on her before he can Become a Man.
(Fun fact: The pink-haired girl and Andrew are an item in real life, and there is a sense of "hey, let's put on a show" in the film that bleeds through.)
Dad's also very upset because Mom's Stop Me From Screaming In Agony While Keeping Me In Agony pills are like seven hundred bucks a bottle, so he drinks nineteen beers and yells a lot. There's a death, and a funeral, and Matt is very busy with his new girlfriend Casey who also happens to have the hobby of taping everything despite not being an ugly weirdo, because
Don't you just love blogs that feature footage of teen girls answering the door or hanging out at her younger brother's seventh birthday party? I can't get enough of them. That's why I'm still on Livejournal.
Anyway, magic powers are great for things like crushing automobiles and flying around and killing spiders, so surely Andrew can just float a few pills into his pocket, right? Yes, right! But no, because Poor People are Terrible, so it's time to Occupy Seattle with a Black Bloc of one. Andrew is conveniently burned over half his body because ugly==evil and Matt's a dreamboat whose own class anxieties and personal insecurities have now all safely been poured into Casey's vagina. (Anxieties and insecurities are stored in semen, btw, thus the insulting term "wanker." Andrew's conflation of semen and vomit is both his queering and his undoing.) Matt does a little TCB, but is properly anguished about it, and the end is quite interesting, actually. Chronicle shifts from SF to teen romp to horror pretty quickly and expertly, and the home-cam conceit does serve to keep the budget down and the optical effects cool. Matt and Andrew's occasionally close, occasionally distant relationship is very believable, as is the art direction around Andrew's house. The domestic stuff hits melodrama at just the wrong moment, but by then the film is pretty much over, so it's cool.
Plus, like most horror movies, the Terrible Person in Chronicle can be counter-read as a tragic hero. (The coda with Matt talking to the camera actually helps cement this.) Why do you think acne-covered teen nerds love Jason and Freddie? Yes, they are terrible. Yes, we are terrible. And formidable. So there's a dual message—Poor People Are Terrible is one.
Rich People, Beware Your Own Complacency is two.