Chronicle (2012)

Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) lives a life tragically similar to that of Carrie White. A teenage social misfit enduring his senior year of high school, Andrew is abused physically and emotionally at home by a mentally unbalanced father (Michael Kelly) and bullied at school by a group of young men led by the sadistic Wayne (Rudi Malcolm). Like the Stephen King-created outcast before him, Andrew has distressingly few friends to turn to for comfort or guidance owing to a timid personality and lack of self-esteem. However, his entire life is about to change once he inexplicably develops the supernatural ability to move objects with the sheer force of his mind, known as telekinesis. At first, this ability imbues the socially isolated and inept Andrew with a newfound sense of confidence. For the first time in his miserable life, he has finally gained control. But as a web-swinging superhero famously said, "with great power comes great responsibility," a memo Andrew doesn't seem to have absorbed. And an entire city will soon find themselves under attack from an increasingly power-obsessed madman whose years of intense suffering at the hands of a cruel, merciless world have rendered him a vengeful monster devoid of humanity.

Brilliantly shot, lightning fast, intelligently scripted, and tightly edited, Chronicle is an electrifying, insidiously terrifying subversion of the superhero genre that finds a compelling avenue into the found footage aesthetic of horror. What begins as a lighthearted coming-of-age adventure about the magic of budding friendship and liberating self-discovery gradually curdles into a cold cautionary tale of the potentially lethal consequences of physical abuse, bullying, hubris, the failure of the healthcare system, and social isolation. Whereas many budding superheroes will utilize their freshly discovered abilities for the betterment of humankind, the central character at the center of Chronicle will exploit his to initiate its downfall. While many found-footage horror films leave audiences wondering exactly why the protagonists insist on leaving their cameras running throughout the entirety of their ordeals, even past the point of realizing their lives are in jeopardy, writer Max Landis provides some satisfying explanations in addition to adding a supernatural twist to the ubiquity of the documentary-style camerawork. Moreover, instead of concluding his superhero-origin-story-gone-awry in the traditional fashion of evil triumphing over good, Landis opts for a more optimistic and bittersweet resolution. Maybe Chronicle ends up being a pure-hearted superhero origin story after all.

Andrew Detmer lives in Seattle with his mother, Karen (Bo Petersen), who is slowly dying of some form of incurable cancer, and his father, Richard, a former firefighter injured on the job who now stays at home collecting the insurance when he isn't busy drowning his sorrows at the bar. Triggered by his addiction, emasculated by his career-killing injury, and fed up with a healthcare system that makes it impossible to care for his slowly suffering wife, Richard has taken to unleashing his rage on his defenseless son, provoking him to begin recording his entire life from here on out with a camera. Andrew's only true friend is his cousin, Matt (Alex Russell), who drives him to school every morning and implores him to break out of his shell and begin interacting with other people, to no avail. His life at their high school provides zero escape, as he's bullied regularly by Wayne's crew and eats lunch by himself on the bleachers. 

One Friday night, after being dragged to a rave by Matt, Andrew receives a reversal of fortune when Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan), the most popular guy in school running for senior class president, invites him to investigate a dark, labyrinthine, and forbidding underground cave in the woods with him and Matt, bringing along his camera to document their exploration. Inside, the trio stumbles across what appears to be a spacecraft that's crashed, its interior resembling an extraterrestrial life form. Moving closer, they find themselves standing before a crystalline object that glows from baby blue to blood red. As the teens stare mesmerized at the object, overworking their brains to figure out what it is they're observing, a series of black veins emerge and grow inside the crystal, triggering a spontaneous nosebleed among them before the camera suddenly cuts out. 

Sometime after emerging from the hole, Andrew, Matt, and Steve realize they've been endowed with the gift of telekinesis. Initially, the trio is elated by their newfound supernatural power, experimenting with it the way any group of adolescent buddies likely would. They adopt a trial-and-error approach, throwing a baseball at each other's faces until they learn to make it float in the air, and stacking Matt's Legos atop one another. As they continue to exert their telekinesis, they suffer periodic nosebleeds, recognizing it as a muscle that grows stronger with more use, and if they stretch it too far at once, it tears. Once they master the art of levitating objects, the boys test their skill on other people, playing pranks hilarious only to themselves: activating a leaf blower to frighten a group of girls, blowing up one of their skirts in the process; smashing a shopper into a shelf in a failed attempt to pull gum out of his mouth; moving a woman's car into another parking spot while she's shopping and laughing as she tries to find it; forcing a woman to run after her shopping cart once it goes rogue; and terrorizing a little girl with a levitating teddy bear. These high jinks are admittedly juvenile and mean-spirited, yet commendably realistic given their age (except for Matt's ability to find the humor in getting smacked in the face by a baseball). 

United by their shared telekinetic ability, Matt, Andrew, and Steve form a friendship, spending nearly every day together like little boys playing with their new internal toy, perfecting it along the way. However, the exhilarating and generally harmless thrill of discovery soon takes a sinister turn as Andrew begins to lose -- or rather forfeit -- any notion of self-control, putting the fate of Seattle and the citizens who inhabit it in the grip of his increasingly unhinged hand. 

Director Josh Trank conceived the idea for Chronicle in high school and spent the following years fleshing out what would become his directorial debut. That sense of adolescent imagination permeates the screenplay and spirit of the finished product, a fast-paced, exhilarating, steadily unsettling, refreshingly character-driven tragedy that blends the adventure and heart of a coming-of-age odyssey with the awe of a sci-fi thriller and nerve-shredding chaos of a revenge-fueled horror film. During the filming of Chronicle, every major participant was in their mid-late twenties. Trank was the oldest at 27, while screenwriter Landis began the journey at 25 and ended it at 26. As for the leading trio of actors assembled, Dane DeHaan was 25, Michael Jordan 24, and Alex Russell the youngest at 23. I myself have just turned 27, placing me in their age range. There's something about that that resonates with me, knowing that someone my age, or close to it, wrote a screenplay so grippingly imaginative yet emotionally mature and detailed. That someone exactly my age directed such a thrilling first feature with the technical craftsmanship and care for characterization of someone born to make horror movies. That three young men could inhabit such lovable and distinctive personalities with the talent of experienced actors in their twenties while retaining the youthful exuberance and immaturity to rewind the clock to their not-too-distant years of adolescence.

Max Landis is the son of John, who famously wrote and directed the lycanthropic horror comedy, An American Werewolf in London, as well as directing the frat-boy comedy classic, Animal House. Upon first glance of his surname, it would be easy to raise an eyebrow and scream, "nepotism," but Landis is no nepo baby. As Roger Ebert astutely noted in his review, all the blood relation in the world can't bestow you with the gift for screenwriting. Straight from the opening scene, Landis and Trank succinctly establish the grim circumstances, personalities of, and relationships between their protagonists with supreme storytelling economy. Within two shots, we understand why Andrew has decided to make a video diary of his life, the abuse he suffers at the mercy of a self-pitying and frequently inebriated father, and the heartbreaking condition of his loving and supportive mother. The dialogue rings with the vibrant authenticity of adolescent speech, never sounding like the words of an adult straining to recapture the feel of youth. Information is relayed organically, whether it's Matt verbalizing his connection to Andrew ("I'm just trying to be a good cousin here, okay?"), Andrew revealing the motivation behind his father's abuse, or the main trio reading the definition of telekinesis on their cellphone and theorizing about what caused them to receive it in the first place. 

Despite being the oldest among the crew, Trank exhibits a deft ability to tap into the emotional realities of teenhood: the soul-crushing doldrums of high school, the loneliness of having no friends, the paradoxical desperation to fit in and blend into the shadows, the exhilaration of a freshly formed friendship, and the mind-blowing joy of scientific discovery. He has maintained the purity of his youth, but tempers it with the emotional intelligence and discipline of a seriously talented director in the making, with editor Elliot Greenberg cutting quickly between shots once Landis relays a piece of crucial information or unveils an exciting new development in his characters' shared or individual journey. There is nary an iota of excess fat on the bones of Landis' beautifully written script, which tells us everything we need to know about his characters and their situation, and nothing more, building quickly, but not hastily, to a conclusion that's sensational and violent, yet utterly and disastrously inevitable.

A striking ingredient that distinguishes Chronicle from the majority of teen-centered horror films is its positioning of three teenage boys as the protagonists. Aside from Andrew, Matt, and Steve, the only other character involved in the mayhem is a video blogger named Casey (Ashley Hinshaw), Matt's love interest and eventual girlfriend. Landis' story is told from the intimate perspective of Andrew, and the only relationships that contribute meaningfully to his development are those with his cousin and first ever true friend. Trank and Landis are careful not to turn their scenario into an exercise in testosterone, regarding this trio of young men as goodhearted, realistic teenagers basking in the freedom of their remaining youth before preparing to settle into the seriousness of adulthood. Trank hit the jackpot in scoring the three young adult actors he did, all of whom contribute outstanding performances, and two of whom would go on to become prominent Hollywood stars. 

In the tortured lead role of Andrew Detmer, Dane DeHaan submits the most beautifully nuanced turn, portraying a perpetual paralyzing fear of his father, a tenderhearted affection for his ailing mother, a self-induced sense of isolation, and a slowly ratcheting anger and thirst for dominance. He captures the qualities that made Sissy Spacek an Oscar-nominated star in 1976, playing Andrew like the male version of Carrie White: a fundamentally good-natured young man who's been dealt an unfair hand and is doing everything in his limited power to contain his righteous indignation and excruciating pain beneath a placid exterior of passivity. As noted by fellow film critic Christy Lemire, DeHaan bears a striking resemblance to a young Leonardo DiCaprio, the perfect look for Andrew: handsome in a way that isn't glamorous in the conventional Hollywood style. He's slender and nerdy, and dresses in a hoodie, the classic image of a potential school shooter reaching his breaking point. With eyes that radiate a deep-seated melancholy and yearning for acceptance and love, DeHaan instantly elicits sympathy for his tragic home life. He's not a monster, or at least he wasn't destined to be. Minus the domestic abuse and school bullying, Andrew is not terribly dissimilar to me and a lot of other young men: shy, insecure, not blessed with an abundance of friends, preferring to stay at home rather than attend parties where he knows he'll be just another face in the crowd. 

Once he emerges from the cave, empowered with telekinesis, a new dimension opens up within Andrew's character, and DeHaan does a brilliant job conveying this newfound sense of self-assuredness. For the first time in who knows how long, Andrew has a reason to smile and laugh and feel good about himself. After being talked into entering his school's talent show by Steve to showcase his telekinesis on stage, he experiences a short-lived taste of popularity and social acceptance. His fellow students clap and cheer for him, they invite him to a party at a mansion, where a pink-haired girl named Monica (DeHaan's at-the-time girlfriend and now-wife, Anna Wood, a dead ringer for Mackenzie Davis) approaches him and initiates an immediate romantic relationship. Never in a million years could Andrew have predicted he would find himself the man of the hour... that is, until ignorance over his limited tolerance for alcohol causes him to humiliate himself in front of (and on) Monica just as he commences the process of losing his virginity. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, Andrew is thrust back into the cold, lonely void where all outcasts live. Unwanted, ostracized, belittled. Landis' script incorporates clever use of foreshadowing in its dialogue, and nowhere is this more painfully apparent than when Matt informs Andrew that his admittance to this party will represent his downfall. 

From this humiliating incident onward, the Andrew we've gotten to know is no more. A hollowed-out, withdrawn shell of his former self. DeHaan almost physically recedes within himself, his inherent kindness and longing for companionship superseded by an alarming increase of aggression and antisocial disdain for society. This point of no return is symbolized by a disturbing shot of Andrew, lying on his stomach on his bedroom floor, elevating a spider and dismembering it in midair. Alone at a junkyard, Andrew speaks into his camera about the nature of an apex predator, foreshadowing his gradual descent into power-fueled madness. The final remnant of humanity in Andrew reveals itself at the funeral for Steve, the latter of whom is accidentally killed by the former in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Safe in the privacy of the cemetery after everyone else has left, Andrew stands before his best friend's grave and tearfully apologizes for his lack of control, admitting that this power is slowly consuming him. DeHaan offers an early warning sign into Andrew's rising narcissism when he uses his TK to swerve an obnoxious trucker off the road and into a river. Clearly, he did it on purpose, annoyed by the man's incessant honking, but after being admonished by Matt and Steve, he issues a halfhearted apology, conveying zero concern for the man's condition, imploring Matt not to inform the police, and checking in on his living-but-injured victim not once in the hospital.

Following Steve's unintended death in the heat of the moment, Andrew undergoes a development similar to that of Seth Brundle in The Fly and Mrs. Carmody in The Mist, growing a superiority complex that erodes his capacity for compassion and empathy for other human beings as he abuses his power as an outlet for the pent-up ire and resentment that have long been bubbling up within. His unquenchable thirst for control supersedes his interest in maintaining even a semblance of self-control, and DeHaan traverses the arc from a put-upon victim of endless abuse to a full-fledged tyrant in need of being put down with shaky-voiced vulnerability and dead-eyed authority. He evolves into a living embodiment of hubris without losing the core of goodness that makes Andrew a tragic figure of innocence lost.

Matt Garetty inhabits the middle of the social hierarchy: he's neither a downtrodden outcast like Andrew nor is he among the most popular men in his senior class like Steve. As portrayed by Alex Russell, Matt is down-to-earth, genuinely cool, and healthily sociable, albeit not necessarily universally beloved. He has no qualms about making a goof of himself on camera by singing "Price Tag" by Jessie J, and has developed an interest in the writings of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, adopting his belief that humans are beings of pure will and therefore emotional and physical desires can never be fulfilled. But all the philosophy in the world can't enrich Matt with the ability to articulate his feelings for the girl he's been secretly crushing on since sophomore year. Chronicle was made a year before Russell would step into the shoes originally worn by John Travolta in Kimberly Peirce's remake of Carrie, a role lightyears removed from this one. Russell appears far more at home playing a nice guy like Matt. While he possessed the ideal appearance for Billy Nolan, shaving his hair into a crew cut, growing out a beard, and buffing up his biceps, he lacked the drunken, goofball charisma of Travolta or the unhinged menace of Jesse Cadotte. 

As confessed by Andrew in a line of relatable and smartly concise exposition, he and Matt were close friends growing up, but drifted apart once they got to high school. Put simply, Matt went on to make friends, and Andrew didn't. Nonetheless, Matt hasn't forgotten about his cousin or developed an ill-defined loathing for him. To the contrary, he drives Andrew to school every morning and looks after him like a frustrated but caring older brother, encouraging him to get socialized but not wanting to put in the full effort to get him there. Take his invite to the fateful party. Matt demands that he attend, refusing to accept no for an answer, going as far as to shame him for never attending parties and spending all his time with his new camera. Then once Andrew is at the party, Matt cuts him loose, telling him to mingle with people and "do [his] own thing." On the one hand, I understand Matt's intention. He doesn't want Andrew to spend his first night at a party attached to his cousin's hip while ignoring everyone else. On the other hand, if he really wanted to help Andrew make friends, he could have introduced him to some of his own. Instead, he takes the easy way out, abandoning him in the name of independence. 

However, once Andrew and Matt emerge from the cave with telekinesis, the closeness they shared in childhood resurfaces, the cousins spending every day together, along with Steve, hanging out like best friends, perfecting their otherworldly ability, having sleepovers, flying in the sky, and making a pact to travel together to Tibet after graduation. Once the power goes to Andrew's head and the darkness lurking inside comes to the fore, Matt is forced to assume the role of his antithesis, using his telekinesis for good to combat his cousin's evil. 

Before he teamed up with filmmaker Ryan Coogler and achieved fame as Oscar Grant in Fruitvale Station and Adonis Creed in the seventh installment of the Rocky franchise, Michael B. Jordan made his mark here as senior class president nominee, Steve Montgomery. Chronicle represents a breakout party for the contemporary Hollywood star. Remember earlier when I mentioned that, of the lead trio, two of them would go on to achieve Hollywood star status? Of the two, there's no question about whose star has risen the highest, and that ascent is captured by a literal star-making supporting turn from Jordan. Reaping the benefits of the greatest end of the social totem pole, Jordan oozes charisma, confidence, and earnestness from the second he kneels down and introduces himself to both Andrew and the audience. 

Until we meet Steve in the flesh, his status in school is suggested by a series of posters plastered on the walls displaying his effervescent, pearly-white smile, and a female student urging Andrew to vote for Steve for president. Without yet knowing him, this man is clearly the most popular guy in his grade, adored by all, and Jordan makes it impossible not to understand why. What makes Steve a wonderful supporting character is that, thanks to the modesty and boyish exuberance brought to the role by Jordan, he never allows his excessive popularity to inflate his ego. As he acknowledges in a scene cut from the theatrical release, he isn't the best at everything; he does his best at everything. In Steve's bedroom, cinematographer Matthew Jensen zeroes his camera in on a collection of trophies resting on his shelves, visually signifying the myriad accomplishments of someone who has spent his young life putting his mind to everything he's desired.

Unlike almost everyone else in the senior class, Steve treats Andrew with kindness and affection, initially inviting him along on his and Matt's spelunking so he can record their findings on his camera, only to realize Andrew is the best friend he's ever made. These two confide in each other about their familial turmoil, drink Baskin-Robbins milkshakes on a Seattle skyscraper. A case could be made that Steve is a better friend to Andrew than his own cousin. Where Matt drives Andrew to a party and abandons him, Steve actually comes up with the idea to showcase Andrew's newfound talent in front of the whole school to grant him a taste of the popularity he's never enjoyed before. Even after Andrew puts an innocent man in a hospital, he refrains from losing his temper and laying into him, leaving that responsibility to Matt. In his tragic final scene, Steve puts himself in harm's way in an attempt to save Andrew from his own reckless, self-destructive impulses -- paying the ultimate penalty for it. 

While the trio of protagonists are satisfyingly fleshed out into well-rounded human beings with individual personalities, two peripheral characters are not treated with the same level of respect. Make no mistake, this story belongs to Andrew, Matt, and Steve. After all, they're the ones who go down into the cavern and come out with telekinesis. They're the ones with whom we're expected to identify and sympathize. Still, there's something deeply disappointing about the perfunctory way in which Landis constructs two of his own creations. Firstly, let's talk about "the girlfriend," who's at least given a name that suits the attractiveness of the actress playing her: Casey. Ashley Hinshaw fits the mold of a classical Hollywood starlet: young, thin, gorgeous, and perhaps not insignificantly, blond. In terms of her acting, she's perfectly fine, contributing a stinging sarcasm and sexy self-confidence to complement her looks. Unfortunately, there's only so much she can do with a big, fat nothingburger of a role. 

Casey is defined solely by her tendency to record her entire life on camera for a video blog. For every interaction, she has her camera on, whether in her hands or set up behind her. What a coincidence! Andrew isn't the only weirdo in the senior class who goes everywhere with a camera. And how convenient for the plot that director Trank can use Casey as an excuse to display footage that wouldn't be captured if Andrew was the only weirdo. Her first two interactions with Matt -- the first of which transpires at the rave, and the second in her doorway -- are strained and hostile for no discernible reason. Then, almost as head-scratching, they soon after become boyfriend and girlfriend. Apart from providing a secondary source of footage, Casey serves little to no purpose in the story, and her relationship with Matt is poorly defined.

Michael Kelly is done even dirtier by Landis as Richard, Andrew's stereotypically abusive alcoholic father. In fact, I would go as far as to say Richard's lazily repetitive characterization is the worst aspect of Chronicle as a whole. Credit where credit is due: Landis goes above and beyond to provide insight into the irreparably fractured psyche of Richard, supplying him with a wealth of credible psychological motivations for his abhorrent, inexcusable behavior. It's not hard to understand why this man has disintegrated into such a hateful, disgusting excuse for a man and especially a father. He once had a fulfilling, prosperous career as a fireman, only to lose it to an injury that's reduced him to a couch potato relying only on workers' compensation. Emasculated by his inability to provide for his family any longer, Richard has taken to frequenting local bars where he may drown his self-pity, thus accounting for his sudden increase in physical aggression (a trait that will soon be adopted by his son). Worst of all, the love of his life is confined in their bedroom, afflicted with cancer, crying in pain and struggling to breathe on a nightly basis. 

Landis takes a clear shot at the modern healthcare system here, portraying them as the real villains of Chronicle: greedy, callous capitalists, indifferent to the suffering of people like Karen, interested only in getting an unattainable surplus of money up front. In an effort to humanize Richard, Trank stages scenes where Andrew is lying in bed, and in the distance, we hear Richard on the phone with pharmacists, screaming that his wife can't breathe, begging for help, insisting he can't afford what they're charging for her medication. Richard feels like a failure because his body will no longer allow him to perform the job that put bread on the table, and the healthcare system won't assist him in caring for his wife. Therefore, he takes those feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness out on his son, an innocent, scrawny kid who lacks the ability to defend himself... or so Richard mistakenly assumes. 

But you know what? As much as I appreciate the context, it's no excuse for the one-dimensionality of his villainy. Landis could have invested a little something called nuance into Richard's characterization, and he chose to write him off as a stock figure. As such, in every scene shared by Kelly and DeHaan, Richard either beats Andrew, threatens him, demeans him, or accuses him of transgressions he didn't commit -- to increasingly irritating effect. Richard isn't Andrew's step-father or his mother's boyfriend. He's his biological father. Andrew is his only, biological son. His final scene in the hospital, in which he irrationally blames his unconscious son for his wife's passing and demands he sit up and apologize, solidifies Richard Detmer as a wholly unsympathetic villain of equal parts cruelty and idiocy. 

While character development and identification sit at the forefront of Landis' objectives, Chronicle would cave in on itself without convincing special effects to render the protagonists' telekinetic episodes believably. Thankfully, this movie provides those by the bucketload. This is not exactly an extravaganza of state-of-the-art special effects along the lines of John Carpenter's The Thing or Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens don't burst through anyone's chest or assimilate someone's body. Rather, these effects are more subtle, depending more on invisible wires to levitate objects and actors into the air. As such, they are seamless, never accompanied by a whiff of artificiality. The most awe-inspiring sequence captures the starring trio rising above the ground and flying at breakneck speed above the clouds, flipping confidently in the air, playing catch with a football. It's here more than any other scene where Trank takes full advantage of the euphoric freedom and endless possibilities offered by his characters' gift, capturing that universal fantasy of flying most people can only dream about. Many people envy birds for the way they can just flap their wings and fly as high as they wish, going wherever they want in a short amount of time, while the rest of us are forced to rely on cars or planes. These characters are human birds, afforded the exact same freedom and exhilaration with their mortal flesh and lack of wings. For these flying scenes, stuntmen were suspended from crane wire rigs, and green screen special effects were employed for close-ups of the actors. For the levitation of inanimate objects, Trank and his special effects team have a field day, employing a combination of practical effects and CGI to stack Legos atop one another, freeze a baseball in front of DeHaan's focused gaze, give a shopping cart a stubborn mind of its own, and so on, inviting us to partake in the trio's boisterous state of mind. 

The camerawork, often a deal-breaker for those unpersuaded by the found footage horror genre, can be dizzying, particularly in the aforementioned flying scenes, in a manner apropos of the characters' actions, and it's always visually coherent in capturing their perspectives. Aside from the bizarre, abrupt conclusion of the discovery scene in the cave, we're privy to everything they witness. We're always aware who's behind the camera at any given point. A common criticism with found footage asks why characters would continue recording the supernatural activity plaguing them past the point of realizing their lives are in danger. Trank and Landis address that concern by using telekinesis as a clever method for incessant recording. Their characters don't need to be holding the camera in their hands to film everything we see; they need only use their minds, and therefore have access to sights unavailable in traditional found footage horror films in which the protagonists are restricted to ground level. Lying in bed at night, Andrew hovers his camera above his head and swirls it around his room. At Steve's funeral, during a confrontation with Matt, Andrew levitates and circles the camera above them in an act of defiance, unconcerned with the prospect of someone noticing. While never explicitly stated, two theories are postulated as to why Andrew has started recording everything: 1) to record his father's abuse and deter him from inflicting any more (which works the first time), or 2) to create a barrier between Andrew and the world around him, providing him with a means of escape. Aside from the cameras of Andrew and Casey, which supply the bulk of Chronicle's footage, Trank switches toward the end to surveillance cameras from a hospital, gas station, and police cars to spice up the proceedings with visual variety and verisimilitude, detailing events as they'll be viewed by the police after the screen cuts to black. The sweetest moment of male camaraderie manifests in the form of a high-angle shot of the central trio having a sleepover in Steve's bedroom, during which Matt earnestly divulges that the three of them learning to fly made for the best day of his life thus far (a sentiment that, in all fairness, should have been spoken by Andrew instead).

In order to attract as wide an audience as feasible, those who match the ages of the characters and fall below them, Trank has opted for a PG-13 rating, limiting the degree of violence shown onscreen. A decision that might have been wise from a financial perspective, if not also an entertainment one. Many horror movies can get away with minimal carnage so long as they compensate with an oppressive atmosphere of impending doom and images so gruesome they snake their way into our subconscious and manifest in our nightmares. Chronicle isn't one of those movies. There's a nagging suspicion that Landis' original script called for more killing and graphic violence, but got watered down by Trank's greedy desire for increased ticket sales. The violence here is a little too tame to take advantage of its premise's gory potential. Trank should have pushed the envelope toward an R rating with a higher body count than the meager one he's racked up. 

Two characters in particular would have been more than worthy of the death penalty. Firstly, Wayne may not be quite a male Chris Hargensen, either in terms of a compelling personality or unforgettably nasty tricks, but he definitely shares her tendency toward sadism -- putting Andrew in a headlock, smacking him repeatedly in the face, snatching his camera and nearly damaging it, and finally, mocking his bedroom humiliation with Monica. While he does get some form of comeuppance -- having three teeth simultaneously yanked out of his mouth -- he's disappointingly permitted to live, and aside from a bit of blood around his lips, his ambush isn't as graphically agonizing as his behavior necessitates. In a petrifying image that recalls the real-world horror of 9/11, a plume of smoke emanating from the top floor of a hospital gradually unveils the sight of Andrew flying in the air holding his father in his arms. Once he drops him, Matt flies up just in time to catch him and bring him back down to safety. Why? This irredeemable loser deserved to be ripped apart limb from limb, as per Landis' original intention. Falling to his death is the least Trank could have permitted, and we don't even get that much. 

It figures that not only the black guy, but the most warmhearted and vivacious character in the movie doesn't get off so easily, although Steve's kill is more implied through a bright flash of lightning and crack of thunder than visibly depicted. The best murder sequence finds Andrew, disguised in his father's old fireman gear, approaching a neighborhood gang of low-lives in broad daylight and demanding their money, his hand outstretched in the shape of a gun. When they laughingly dismiss him, he telekinetically hurls them into the street en masse before robbing their lifeless bodies. It's fast, furious, and seasoned with a sprinkle of the red stuff. This movie could have used more set pieces like that. Otherwise, more people are thrown backward than outright killed, their fates left unknown. 

After devoting the preceding hour and ten minutes of their movie to developing their protagonists, ratcheting tension, and reeling in Andrew's progressively irrepressible anger, Trank and Landis grant themselves the freedom to let loose in the final 20 and blow the roof off, figuratively and literally. In executing their showstopper of a climax, the filmmakers blend the vengeful catharsis of Carrie and the citywide annihilation of Cloverfield into an equally chaotic and chilling confrontation between the forces of good and evil that satisfies as a familiar but organic progression in Andrew's development into an all-powerful monster convinced of his own superiority. As Matt and Andrew face each other in a life-or-death battle for the lives of their fellow citizens, the windows to the Space Needle shatter, both cousins hurl each other in the air and crash through the walls of a mall, apartments are obliterated from floor to ceiling, a helicopter falls from the sky, police cars are overturned and propelled backward. There's not much gore to speak of, but the chaos is masterfully staged and edited, effectively transferring the panic and disorientation of the public to the audience. 

In the end, Matt is forced to make the hardest decision of his young life, recognizing that Andrew is beyond saving, and the longer he waits to do what he knows is necessary, the more innocent people will be injured or killed. Most distressingly of all, Matt never had the chance to tell his cousin how much he loved him, or rather he passed up the opportunity for the sake of maintaining a misguided veneer of machismo. Despite the air of tragic necessity that permeates the climax, Landis doesn't conclude his story on the note of hopelessness that characterizes the ending of the majority of found footage horror. In a conventional outcome, Matt would die, and Andrew would reign supreme, spreading more havoc in his wake. Instead, Landis subverts that subgenre trope in favor of a message of hope for a better future, demonstrating that such uplift need not be reserved only for the strictly benevolent brand of superhero cinema.

6.7/10