Chronicle
Leading into the third act, a character asks “What are you doing? Are you filming graves? I don’t get it”. It’s (unintentionally) on the money. Chronicle – to a large degree found-footage-by-numbers – has a neat trick in its oft “telekinetically controlled” camera, but all more often the question agitates: Why? Why would he feel the need to pull a whole array of cameras in a circle around him? Answer: the film needed dramatic shot-reverse shot close-ups at the climax. Why ferhgerdssake does this other character film constantly, including – apparently – every visitor at her front door? Answer: the film wanted to show the scene. By the end you’ll wistfully recall when it actually bothered with some semblance of internal logic*.
We open with Andrew, an unpopular teen who has bought a camera to film evidence of his father’s abuse. I say evidence – the subplot is never followed up. He takes it to school too because, er, he likes it I guess. Fast forward the character setup and we find he, his cousin Matt and the uber-popular Steve jump down a hole into some 50s B-movie. Cut to: they have superpowers. Genre mash! Mass appeal! What follows is sadly typical of Fox in recent years: plot and characterisation streamlined to – no, not just cliché – redundancy. In between teenage shits and giggles with their newfound abilities, the first hour is non-stop telegraphing. Anakin Magneto The Goddamn Apes Andrew is going to turn out evil because he got treated bad and stuff. Also, power corrupts. Deep. And when it comes: I’m not exaggerating when I say that the climax of the flick was a constant source of exasperation. Unspeakably awful. I just don’t understand how anyone could sit and think, “Yes. I’m glad I spent my ten quid on this.”** The special effects were naff, too. There’s a way to shoot with green screens and this wasn’t it.
Did I mention I didn’t think this film was at all good? God save us when the sequel drops.
*The more technical details – cameras that somehow film non-stop with infinite storage and battery charge, somewhat prescient framing by those operating the cameras – are obviously more forgiveable, but you miss a film like Cloverfield which went to some effort to account for these things.
**If you did, please fill me in.
I liked it. Some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective.
Oh… and interesting pacing devices, too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the, humanity of the director’s compassionate soul which contrived through the medium of the film structure to sublimate this, transcend that and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other. And one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was that the film was about.
…
It was a dumb film.
I’ve seen it, it’s rubbish.
Okay, so, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, okay?
Nothing in this movie is more than a 6 for me. It peaks at ‘Ok’.
[…] Gone, but for one scene, are the entirely physical bullies – such as those in the poor Chronicle, for example. Instead, Charlie is socially ostracised, something much harder to convey […]