Chronicle

CHRONICLE
Written by Max Landis
Directed by Josh Trank
Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan

It's all fun and games until everybody gets hurt.

Every now and then, a production with a small budget (and, more often than not, handheld camera aesthetics) comes up with a tried and true viral marketing campaign. YouTube, Facebook and all the other social networks become sodden with ads and sneaky trailers for the flick. At the heart of these campaigns are the film, sometimes a winner (ala the brilliant Cloverfield) and sometimes a stinker (Paranormal Activity and its offspring). You could be forgiven for overlooking them much of the time. Not so with Chronicle - for once, you should believe the hype.

Social outcast Andrew (Dane DeHaan) has a tough life - he is bullied and beaten at school, bullied and beaten at home by his alcoholic father, bullied and beaten almost anywhere he goes by everyone except his detached cousin Matt (Alex Russell). He is goaded into filming a journey down a mysterious tunnel in the woods with Matt and school star quarterback Steve (Michael B. Jordan), where the boys stumble upon an alien object that gives them telekinetic abilities. They may not be ready for such power, however, as Andrew soon begins to prove.

Though it follows the classic tropes of a comic book hero origin story, Chronicle has enough vitality and difference to be its own kind of creature. Critic Andrew Schenker was quick to pass off the morality play as 'tired and stale' but in reality there is much to be weighed in the moral greyscale of this film. Yes, screenwriter Max Landis is too hamfisted in his attempts to shove philosophy references into Matt's dialogue, but even without such obvious signposting the core of the film is intriguing. Andrew is in truly dire straits: his mother is dying, his father is accusatory and abusive, and there are people on his street who would happily beat him to death. It's understandable, in a skewed sort of way, that Andrew's newfound powers would make the prospect of being an 'apex predator' alluring.

This is no simple Spiderman tale - it holds much more in common with über-violent classic Akira than with any US comic book film. The actions of these boys have real consequences, as they all too quickly find out, but the temptations of adolescence get the better of them. What is truly enjoyable is that not everything revolves around how difficult it is to be male, middle-class and white, or the standard American teenage tropes of 'scoring' and being popular. These demons rear their ugly heads, but they only give Andrew pain. The boys' pranking and sudden discovery of the power of flight are joyous to watch, as is Andrew's talent quest, and are far more entertaining than Steve's quest to see Matt bedded. As for Matt, his relationship with the attractive Casey (Ashley Hinshaw) is so painfully awkward that it is thankfully relegated to the position of minor side story.

Everyone here is a first-timer - the director, the writer, and the actors all - which is perhaps what makes the film so impressive. Every other recent comic adaptation runs on star power rather than story, whereas Chronicle eschews blockbuster budget and big names in favour of a carefully honed thrill ride. Without Dane DeHaan at its core, the movie would fail - he is an excellent cypher, at once sympathetic and disturbingly monstrous. There are too many moments to count where his experimentations elicit gasps of horror. The writing tries too hard to drive home key points of apex predation, action and consequence, but is generally natural and endearing. What impresses most are the set pieces - such as the spider sequence or Andrew's clash with the neighbourhood thugs, dressed head-to-toe in fireman's gear - and the clever use of a found-footage aesthetic.

Fortunately, the producers have ignored suggesting whether or not the footage is found by anyone - it's simply a clever conceit, a way to make an old story look new, but it works. Steadicam is excused by Andrew's habit of levitating the camera, and the final face-off is pulled off with a trick so outrageous it borders on hilarious. (There's also a very clever nod to the gods of the theatre, as the film ends with a tongue-in-cheek deus ex machina that's quite hard to hate.)

This is an awesome thriller with a few laudable beginner's bugs, and it couldn't be a better debut for director Josh Trank, who is rumoured to have been optioned for the Fantastic Four franchise. Hopefully he won't be destroyed as many a filmmaker has been by the spate of Marvel adaptations - for once, here is a director who has proven that a superhero movie can still be super. This chronicle is one you can't afford to miss.