Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012)
The irony of Chronicle is so blatant it makes the task of reviewing it simultaneously futile and too easy to pass up. Indeed, from its trio of characters — which includes a philosophy-obsessed idiot (Alex Russell), a soon-to-be-school-president egoist (Michael B. Jordan) and an abused and socially inept main protagonist (Dane DeHaan; above) — to its basic premise which could have been lifted directly from one of Mark Millar’s crappy Millarworld one-off comic book mini-series, everything about Chronicle looks and feels like the film most young male nerds could have ambitiously written in high school, only to be shelved almost immediately. Unless, of course, you happen to be John Landis’ son, Max Landis, who, at 26 years of age, writes a mostly forgettable pre-teen male fantasy.
Telling the story of three young man acquiring super-telekinetic powers following the discovery of an alien formation, even its stylistic device (the wholly overused found-footage aesthetic, which I must admit still fascinates me) adds to the film’s puerility, but perhaps intentionally. Initially, the kid’s telekinesis seems like a metaphor for untapped teenage potential, as one wonders if the film will get past their idiotic and immature hijinks and take the route of the cautionary tale or stick with the simplistic origin story of super-powered beings (villains and heroes). Unfortunately, Chronicle does mostly the latter, ultimately irritating in its familiar themes, structure and Manichean characterization. At best, Josh Trank’s debut displays some interesting and ingenious use of the found-footage visuals (through telekinetically-carried point of views and the necessity for multiple angles, ingeniously resolved in the film’s hyper-mediated public catastrophe conclusion) and at worse promotes selfish and idiotic behaviour parading as teen angst. The film’s tagline (“Boys will be boys”) is sadly dead-on as Chronicle is very much a film about a big studio (20th Century Fox, which remind us in the advertising campaign they are the studio that brought us X-Men) giving young filmmakers the liberty to make a film about teenagers who are given a very large amount of power (thus liberty) and, in both cases, do very dumb, uninteresting and disappointing things with it.
I am of the eerie impression that Nima Nourizadeh’s Todd Phillips-produced Project X (2012) will provide a perfect companion piece to this vibrant display (or rather, uh, chronicle) of teenagers’ lack of rationale.
