Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely - Chronicle review

Posted @ Feb. 07 2012 08:10AM by Shawn - arts-entertainment

If you have geek friends or are a geek yourself, at some point I'm sure the conversation of what you would do if you or someone you know had superpowers has come up. Would you enjoy it? Would it freak you out? Would you use it for good or evil or would it just make you want to wear your underwear outside your pants? What would it really be like to bust free of the trappings of the four color comic book world and apply superpowers in real life? In the case of the movie Chronicle that takes those ideas and questions into consideration, you get some interesting results.

Chronicle is another in the "found footage" genre of moviemaking that's been fairly popular since the Blair Witch phenomenon. Instead of feeling low budget, though, Chronicle is much more the step brother or cousin to JJ Abrams's Cloverfield than Blair Witch, putting a spin on an existing genre. Where it was monster movies getting a new twist with Cloverfield, Chronicle takes a shot at the super power genre.

Chronicle owes a lot to various other movies and tv shows. Obviously it owes something to Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and even the Paranormal Activity franchise, but it also nods at movies like Push and Unbreakable while also showing the potential that was lost on the genre series Heroes not long ago.

The directing debut of Josh Trank who also helped create the story along with Max Landis, the son of movie director John Landis, Chronicle tells the story of Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a teen who lives in a less than ideal situation with an alcoholic, abusive father (Michael Kelly) and a bed ridden, deathly sick mother. The very first shot of the movie sets the stage for letting the audience know Andrew's day-to-day life, with Andrew setting up a video camera in his room while his drunk father beats on his door, yelling at him. Andrew warns his father that he's now decided to start video taping his life (giving meaning to the name of the movie) so he can have documentation of the abuse he receives from his father.

DeHaan plays Andrew in such a way that you can identify who Andrew would have been at your high school, either as the kid you might have known who was bullied to the point of breaking or maybe even you were Andrew dealing with shyness and bullies and the feelings of being powerless at fighting back. Your heart goes out to him, wishing he could find a way to stand up for himself.

One of the few people Andrew can call his friend is his cousin, Matt (Alex Russell) who quotes great philosophers and gives Andrew lifts to school. Matt also lets Andrew tag along with him to social situations, pushing Andrew go to a party where Andrew meets the popular Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan) who's running for student counsel with hopes of a political career in his future. The three boys discover a weird hole out in the woods during the party and Matt and Steve being drunk and high decide to explore it with Andrew tagging along with his video camera while begging both boys not to bother. Little does Andrew know that this odd discovery is going to be the event to change his and his friends lives.

After encountering something in the hole the boys discover they have telekinetic abilities. Like normal kids playing catch in their parents' backyard, the boys pelt each other with baseballs in an effort to try to stop it in mid-air. They play pranks on shoppers at local stores, pushing cars into different parking spots, making carts move by themselves and even making a teddy bear terrorize a little girl at a toy store. These guys aren't Spider-Man looking at these powers as great responsibility. They look at them as ways to have fun. They're a laugh, pranking people and acting like normal teenagers would if given these powers. But the powers also grant something for Andrew that he never had, a chance to bond with others and actually make friends. Andrew, Matt and Steve start hanging out every day, testing their powers in secret while Andrew documents everything on his trusty video camera.

Even with all this fun and newfound friends, Andrew still harbors a darker side and when it starts to manifest it puts Matt and Steve at odds with him. Home life for Andrew keeps getting worse and worse as his mother's health continues to decline while his father keeps mentally and physically abusing him to the point where Andrew can only take so much. Andrew keeps using his powers, making him stronger and stronger while making his choices more and more suspect, putting the two cousins at odds with each other to the point where you know something will come to a head. And when it does, it is worth seeing the spectacle in all of it's anger and glory.

As a geek myself, I found Chronicle refreshing because it took the typical trappings of the super power genre and made a film that's grounded in reality enough that when the boys use their powers you feel like you're right there with them, learning as they go. But when you ground a story about boys who get super powers with a backdrop of an abusive parents and bullying, seeing something as exhilarating as flying through the clouds while playing touch football makes the audience feel like they can soar too. Still, Trank and Landis's movie manages to show an audience that there's still some untapped potential at the heart of the super power/super hero boom we've experienced since X-Men reignited the appeal of these movies. It also gives weight to what would make someone who has power use it for all the right or wrong reasons, which any geek would know, might make you eye up even your best friends in a different light if you really knew what they'd do with it.