2012 Films Appreciation: Chronicle
Breaks The Rules of One Genre of Movie And Answers A Question I’ve Really Had About Another
Chronicle does not have the same reputation as many of the movies I have or will discuss in this series but I consider it a classic all the same. The major reason that I love it is that completely turns the tables on a genre I’ve never had any use for and actually some of the nagging questions I’ve had on one of the most popular genres in history.
I have never liked the found footage film. It has less to do with my distaste for The Blair Witch Project (perhaps in another article I will explain that I have a very specific reason for hating it that most don’t) and far more for what it did for horror as a genre. Horror wasn’t exactly in a great place in the 1990s but movies like Scream and Seven were trying to do something different with the genre when it came to both story and character. Blair Witch basically took character out of the equation altogether and because imitation is inevitable ever since then we have more or less been deluged with variations on this theme. For all the various qualities of Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield the characters in the films are little more than stick figures who are basically being moved around the screen into increasingly horrific situations, all of which essentially end the same way. One doesn’t even really need a story for a found footage movie; they all just have variations on the same formula.
Chronicle chose to completely violate that formula every step of the way. It might not be considered a horror film by some but it is the textbook definition of what we are seeing on the screen. It also decides that the story will not be told by a single camera or even two but as many as possible. By the climax of the film, writer Max Landis and director John Trank aren’t even pretending to stay with the boundaries of their genre and basically using every single camera that might be able to film what’s happening as a result. They are essentially staying true to the title: this is a chronicle of events, not something that is being found after the fact years later. Given as the action flows in the film, this is not something that could easily have been covered up.
Chronicle is also very clearly a variation on the superhero movie. There were several good comic book films during 2012, and at some point I will probably write about The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. But in a way, I think this may be the very best superhero film of 2012, mainly because it does something that not even the best movies of the MCU even tried to do and Christopher Nolan would only occasionally hit at in the Dark Knight trilogy.
I have never been as interested in comic books and I have a greater interest in films and television series that are based on these stories. But often watching these series or films, my mind is often caught up on minute details that none of them even acknowledge. Who does the dry cleaning for heroes like Superman and Batman? How do so many of the people in their orbit never catch on to the obvious? (Greg Berlanti actually did a very good job in expanding on that idea.) What kind of construction has be done in the aftermath of the kind of battles that Superman has with Zod or Spiderman’s battles with the Green Goblin?
Now I do admit most of these details are minutia that really don’t matter, even to the pedants and nitpickers. But I’ve also wondered about another, more serious issue, one that Chronicle tackles dead on: What if you suddenly were gifted with amazing superpowers — and were psychologically unequipped to deal with them? I’m not saying you’re a bad person or psychotic — just a teenager.
Chronicle tells the story of three high school students: Matt (Alex Russell), his cousin Andrew (Dane DeHaan) and Steve (Michael B. Jordan). Yes it should not shock you that DeHaan and Jordan have become known for their work in comic book movies: DeHaan was Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spiderman 2 and Jordan has worked in both DC and Marvel franchises, most famously as Kilimonger in Black Panther. Try to forget that if you haven’t seen this film and look at them in this movie.
Andrew is the center of the film. He is shy and unpopular and prefers his camera to other people. His mother is dying; his father is a drunk and its pretty clear his father has been verbally, if not physically abusing him for a while. Matt is his cousin and his only friend, clearly smart but hasn’t done enough to reach out to him. Steve is cheerful, handsome and running for class president. One night they are out walking together, testing Andrew’s new movie camera in a gloomy field and they find a hole. A perfect, circular hole. Matt and Steve persuade Andrew to come down with them into it with their camera. They find a weird, crystalline object that is essentially a UFO without them saying it. They stare at it. And something happens.
Soon after they find that they are able to move Legos and other small objects with their minds. A lesser film would have them realize immediately that this is telekinesis; these boys have to look it up in the dictionary.
When Peter Parker got bitten by a radioactive spider, the traditional origin is that before becoming a superhero he tried to become a professional wrestler to make money for his family. That has always struck me as realistic because it’s the kind of immature decision a teenager would make if he suddenly became strong. Chronicle is realistic (as any sci-fi movie ) can be called one is because all three teenagers act like teenagers. They test their muscles and build their powers and then start acting like teenagers. They use their powers to blow up cheerleader’s skirts. They put on the most impressive magic show imaginable at their high school. At one point, they learn they can fly and actually fly screaming joyfully into clouds. In his review Roger Ebert asks: “Even if you could fly ten thousand feet, would you want to?” But when you’re a teenager you think you can live forever.
Matt, who is the most responsible one, thinks they should keep their powers secret. It is very hard for a teenager to keep secrets about whose cheating on who; it’s impossible to do so if you suddenly learn you can fly. This probably would have blown out of control eventually, but Landis is smarter than that and takes the film into the dark territory that is horror.
DeHaan is a very real sense the star of this movie because he is riveting to watch. Our sympathies are with him because of his family life and as he begins to become more popular as a result of his powers, both he and some of the other characters begin to root for him. It’s a cliché of Spiderman that with great power comes great responsibility. Andrew thinks his responsibility is to use his powers to right wrongs — that have been done to him.
At one point in the film, he flexes his muscles on a group of bullies and yanks out their teeth. He studies the teeth in his basement and while we should be impressed by his confidence, when he uses the term ‘apex predator’ about himself, we know nothing good can come of it. He begins to lash out at his father in a way he hasn’t before. He decides to use his powers to save his mother and its goes horribly wrong.
Then comes the last half hour of the film in which Landis and Trank throw away every single rule of found footage. They have to. Matt has learned something is wrong with Andrew and rushes out to find him. The fifteen minutes that follow are essentially the climatic brawl that we would get in Man of Steel a couple of years earlier, but its infinitely superior in every way. For one thing, Trank had a budget of twelve million dollars, little more than five percent of Snyder’s. Much of what follows is Matt pleading with Andrew to stop his reign of destruction as he begins to tear the city apart. Andrew is beyond reasoning with and a certain point his power becomes beyond imagining; in the most frightening scene in a long time, Andrew waves his hands and a squadron of police cars scatter. Matt is essentially spend as much of this scene as he can trying to put off the inevitable, and when he finally has to do it, it is far more terrifying than any horror death I’ve ever seen. But that’s not the end of the movie… there’s a coda that in its way is heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.
Max Landis is as much a fanboy as he is a writer; many of the stories that he has written have been short, experimental films dealing with elements of comic books involving Batman and The Flash. The son of the legendary John Landis, many of the films and series he has written have been radically experimental, if not successful. Many believe his adaptation of the classic Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently franchise was cancelled far too soon and he tried to tell the story of Frankenstein from the perspective of Igor, who was played by Daniel Radcliffe. After making Chronicle, Trank was quite naturally handed his own superhero franchise, but fell victim to all the problems that have surrounded Fantastic Four for more than twenty years and has only directed on film, the disastrous Capone, since. Most of the cast became stars: Jordan is by far the biggest one, but Russell has worked steadily in the decade since, the last six years as one of the stars of CBS SWAT. DeHaan flirted with movies for a while, but after the disastrous box office failure of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has worked less frequently. He has mainly starred in TV the last few years, appearing in the limited series Lisey’s Story and The Staircase.
I am not surprised given both the box office success and Hollywood’s desire to both reboot and make sequels to everything that another version of Chronicle is being planned. Whatever they plan it will never work nearly as well. By this point in pop culture the teenagers who might look for these powers would know enough horror movies not to go down in a hole like the one in this one…and if they got powers would deal with them by just saying: “We should be careful. Remember what Tom Holland always says.” Everyone is so self-aware now that if there was an Andrew in this film, everything that happened to him would just be considered a supervillain origin story, which was never the point.