"Chronicle"-ing a super hero




★★½ to ★★★ (PG-13)


I was kinda won over by Chronicle. Its story is the essentially the beginnings of a comic book super hero. Much in the same way as M. Night Shayamalan's severely underrated Unbreakable (although not as good). I won't spoil anything but to say that Chronicle does works wonders in many scenes, making you blink twice with its surprises only to run off with excess in its finale. It's all good. Chronicle is just what I needed this spring. Not much has been good and the one decent movie you find to be decent is well worth mentioning. Which doesn't mean Chronicle is average, but it most likely would have been forgotten by yours truly if there were better movies out there to watch. Nevertheless I was still taken by its tale of three high school friends who make an incredible discovery. It's when their lives spin out of control and the darker side of the story gets unleashed that the movie really takes off, showing just how fragile we are as human beings and how easily corrupted we can be as well. Stuff that's been done to death before but is given a cool style here. The film is shot -by first time director Josh Trank- with hand held digital camera. big studio pictures love shooting this way now, just check out last month's Project X, and I do think that shooting the movie this way does makes the story a bit more plausible. Especially given its sometimes lazy script and the flaws that inhibit it. But really do go watch Chronicle, its got a cool vibe going for it, has a slim running time at just 84 minutes long and does have more things to say than most American stuff out there at the moment.