As parents, we strive to teach our children everything they need to know to survive in the world: don’t talk with strangers, don’t take drugs, drive carefully, and don’t descend into strange holes in the ground. The parents of high school students Andrew, Matt and Steve must have skipped the last bit of advice, because a few minutes into “Chronicle,” their sons are dropping into a dark hole, video camera in tow, to look at a glowing rock. Things hum and crackle, there’s screaming, the camera goes dark, and then...
And then the friends are in someone’s backyard using their minds to stop baseballs in mid-air. As the ball spins a few inches from Andrew’s face, suspended by whatever power the glowing rock put in him, his nose begins to bleed. Clearly, these boys don’t know what they’re dealing with.
The makers of “Chronicle,” however, know exactly what they’re doing. Before they shove their protagonists onto a runaway train, they develop them into human beings. They devote the most screen time to Matt and Andrew, cousins who reside at opposite ends of the social spectrum.
Matt is good-looking and popular, but he also likes philosophy, a blonde girl named Casey, and doing the right thing. The socially awkward Andrew is a target for ridicule. The other kids at school and in his neighborhood relentlessly torment him. His mother is dying of cancer. And his father physically and verbally abuses him. Andrew is a seething cesspool of rage, about to boil over. Only Matt treats him kindly.
At first, the guys have fun with their newfound power, and so do writer Max Landis (son of director John Landis) and director Josh Tranks. They scare a kid in a toy store, mess around with people at a supermarket, and get into general mischief. They slowly get stronger, as though they’re developing a muscle, and before long, Steve is moving an entire car, and then taking off, Superman-style, into the clouds.
As Andrew’s abilities outpace Matt and Steve’s, the darkness in him grows as well. He throws a truck off the road, nearly killing the driver, and then begins to lash out at school. Steve reels him in, and the two put on an amazing performance at a school talent show. For a few minutes, Andrew is the most popular kid at school, but things revert back to the way they were and then get worse when he does something embarrassing during an impromptu bedroom encounter at a party.
Landis and Tranks, however, never lose control of their story or characters. Rather, “Chronicle” builds slowly toward its inevitable climax, and delivers what audiences want and are expecting at every point. The early scenes are fun, the latter scenes are genuinely tense and full of spectacle, and by the time the end comes, Landis and Tranks have invested enough time in their characters that audiences should care about what happens to them.
The three actors who play the boys, and especially Dane DeHann as Andrew, help their writer and director by delivering good performances.
Tranks filmed “Chronicle” using the “found footage” approach, which means the movie consists of snippets of video the characters shot. He cleverly works around the pitfalls of the genre, such as shaky-cam shots and relying on moments when people would normally put down the camera, by having Andrew move his video camera with his mind. Footage shot by Casey, as well as cell phone, police chopper and security camera footage, all have a role, too. “Chronicle” is technically and artistically one of the best “found footage” movies I have seen.
I especially like the sequence during which Casey goes from standing on the ground, to getting in a car, to being lifted high in the air, to crashing into Seattle’s Space Needle, to being snatched out of the car in mid-air as the vehicle is falling, to landing safely on the ground – without breaking the shot. “Chronicle” is Tranks’ first movie as a director, and man, does he have some chops. I’m already looking forward to whatever he does next.
“Chronicle” is surprisingly good, and heralds the arrival of new talent both in front of and behind the camera. It also serves as a great educational tool for boys. I certainly wouldn’t descend into that hole after seeing where those boys ended up.
Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence, thematic material, some language, sexual content and teen drinking. Three stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncounyherald.com.