By now everyone in the country should have seen this movie that’s going to, but just in case, I’ll clarify things for you: see it. Don’t wait for DVD. This movie is everything that none of last year’s superhero films were: fresh, intimate, populated with actual characters, and action that won’t put you to sleep.
What Works: After all the years of CGI overload audiences have been asked to endure, this movie takes a wonderfully stripped down approach to its effects so that I was constantly asking “How did they do that?” The movie’s effects are so seamless (until perhaps the very end, although the big battle’s integration of security cameras as the characters smash into stores was brilliant) that they’re staged more like magic tricks than the usual bombastic Thor/Green Lantern/Captain America/Transfomers/I-Better-Stop-Listing-Because-I-Could-All-Day effects. What’s even better than the effects is that this movie has an actual character at its center: Dane Dehaan (who played a different troubled youth in the last season of HBO’s criminally underrated In Treatment) who shows you with frightening clarity how a super-villain or any killer is created.
Dehaan’s Andrew is only loved by a mother who is dying and he is bullied at school and at home by an abusive father, and when he finally decides he’s had enough of it—-first manifested by making the camera float in wonderful handheld shots, then by dismantling a spider with his mind in a terrific, eerie sequence—-the film morphs from a fun adventure into a riveting yet sympathetic drama. I put this right up there with The Dark Knight and Watchmen as the only films that truly explore what makes superheroes tick without paying mere, hollow lip service to caring, and Chronicle is more intimate than either of those films, getting you even closer to what makes villains tick. This is the rare film “for teenagers” that feels more adult than anything out there right now.
What Doesn’t Work: To say the other two leads aren’t nearly as interesting as Andrew is an understatement and the “central” hero of Matt starts a relationship with a pretty blonde blogger—-who’s also filming, (un)naturally, to match the film’s found footage gimmick—-that feels as unlikely as it does unnecessary. It never really leads anywhere, and neither does the character of Matt, and if there’s a sequel centered with Matt as the star, I can see where that would go nowhere fast.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Possibly left the romance between Matt and the blonde blogger on the cutting room floor OR more accurately explored how three teenage boys would use their powers to seduce women. Two of the heroes never really use their powers for self-gain and I’m not so sure young men would really be so moralistic or self-contained. Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles for the rare Hollywood movie I majorly liked. Don’t miss it.