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Is it worth $10? No
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No…It’s…another found footage movie. The geniuses behind the marketing for “Chronicle” want you to think you’re about to see something special, but don’t be fooled like I was. From raising heads in New York City with “flying people” to quick 30 second TV spots that get your adrenaline flowing, there is no doubt that the studios did an amazing job raising interest for this film. The problem is once you see it you feel disappointed. There wasn’t a single person walking out of “Chronicle” that thought it was amazing, and this is why.
The movie starts with us in the bedroom of the main character, Andrew. He is looking through his new camera he got to “Chronicle” his life (get it?). You get to see his dad being an angry drunk, his mom dying of cancer, him being picked on at school, and his cousin hating on him. It is painfully obvious to see where things are heading once he and his future best friends stumble upon some rock in the ground. After some flashing lights and loud noises, you find out they now have telekinesis (they can manipulate things with their minds). This is where the movie picks up in the entertainment factor, but lets us down in quality. More or less this is a rip-off of “Push” and “Jumper.” Teenagers abuse the powers they are given after hilariously playing pranks on people (all of which are shown in the trailers), and end up with an inevitable good vs. evil chaotic CGI mess.
The acting wasn’t that great, but I 
was willing to forgive it so long as the rest of the movie was good. Relatively unknown actors Dane DeHaan (TV’s “True Blood”), Alex Russell (“Almost Kings”), and Michael B. Jordan (“Red Tails,” I wish I could say “Space Jam,” but that’s the wrong one) head up the cast as the three guys who aren’t friends but of course become friends once they receive powers. Andrew’s (DeHaan) drunken father is played by Michael Kelly (“Dawn of the Dead”), who delivers a very typical and uninspired performance of an alcoholic (c’mon, we all just saw Nick Nolte in “Warrior”). All of the actors felt like they were lifted straight from the SyFy originals I love so much, or they came from the “Jumper” Hayden Christensen school of acting. Thanks to the writing and 80 minute runtime you never really get to feel for any of the characters except for Andrew, but by the end he comes off as whiney and annoying. There was so much the writers could have done as far as making you feel sympathetic toward Andrew’s plight, but instead they make you hate him. One of the main characters dies mid-way through, and it’s as if he didn’t matter. The actual ending was so corny and cheesy that the rats in the theater got sick.
If it had been given maybe $10 million more in its budget I think the production could have turned this film into something worth watching. The fresh take on the superhuman genre using the found footage element, the awesome use of telekinesis, and what could have been mind blowing special effects should have set this apart. Due to the budgetary restraints the production had to settle for just above SyFy channel special effects. The flying was the worst part. There are times you think you can actually see the strings holding these guys in the air. There wasn’t a single thing that happened using CGI that wasn’t painfully obvious, and it didn’t blend well with the environment at all.
As a whole I thought this was entertaining, but in no way, shape, or form could I ever recommend someone spend $10 to see this; it is a rental at best. This has everything you have seen a dozen times before: found footage, teenaged super humans, high school drama, good vs. evil, and chaotic destruction on a massive scale, but it lacks a proper adhesive to hold it all together. In this situation that adhesive was money. If the production had more money they could have hired better actors, put more into the CGI, and made it at least a really awesome action flick. What’s worse is that the studio showed all the best scenes in the trailers, and what wasn’t shown there the studio released in clips online. There is legitimately nothing new to see that isn’t already available for free on the Internet. A short run time, bad acting, bad CGI, and poor character development really limit the potential this has. It is sure to make bank at the box office due to its budget, but it’s much better value if rented at home.
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