Reviews Film / Chronicle

A great idea, made crappy by the

After the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, I guess "Found Footage" was the new hotness in film. It let directors use crappy angles and shaky-cam to hide bad action or acting. But unlike Blair Witch or Cloverfield, which actually kind of tried to use the cameras in a somewhat realistic way, Chronicle does it very lazily. For example, Cloverfield is consistently shot from a handheld, eye-level perspective, because that's how a cameraman would use a camcorder. It's limited to one specific "videotape" because, well, it's "found footage" - this is the videotape that was found. It also implemented flashbacks by incorporating "taped over" scenes very well to cement the use of this trope.

In Cloverfield, the director knew both the advantages and limitations of "found footage" and used them very well. In Chronicle, they have no reason for incorporating "found footage", realized there were limitations, and then made sloppy excuses for when the "found footage" wouldn't be capable of showing a particular scene. The director wanted to have all the advantages, but none of the disadvantages, of the trope, which renders it pointless and therefore annoying.

One of the kids is just so obsessed with videotaping absolutely everything we get "found footage" of him walking through the halls on a normal day at school, him answering the door, etc. Yup, there's your explanation. We have all these normal, everyday scenes you find in normal films because this kid just wants to film every second of his life.

And when he gets his psychic powers, he uses his powers to keep the camera nearby and videotape everything as well. And to get camera angles that would be on a normal movie shot as well, but now it's "found footage"... uh, yay?

So yeah, the usage of this trope adds absolutely nothing at all to this film. It neither limits our viewpoint for a real purpose - in Cloverfield, for example, deliberately hiding the action keeps the tension up and maintains the mystery/fear of the monster. We cannot know what the characters don't know. Characters may see what we didn't see on camera, so we experience tension only through the characters' own fear. In Chronicle? Nope. Nor does it do anything different (you get city-spanning shots, high aerial shots, stuff like that... because psychic powers! found footage!) It serves no purpose other than making some of the camerawork shaky and deliberately low-quality.

Now, for the plot: it could have been pretty interesting. A bunch of teens get psychic powers. One of them is bullied at school and abused at home, so guess what happens? It's an interesting moral question. It's acted fairly well.

Overall the plot and the writing is decent, with an interesting premise, let down by deliberately poor camerawork and a poor excuse for using that trope.