Review: Chronicle

My review of the found footage superhero film Chronicle appears today at Strange Horizons.  I was initially dubious about mashing together two such tired concepts, but despite some weaknesses on the character front Chronicle revitalizes a subgenre I'd long since thought had lost its sense of immediacy.  Definitely worth a look.

Comments

belledame said…
after reading your review, i can say that part of what makes "chronicle" fresh is the absence of a mentor. there is positive adult figure presented save for andrew's sickly mother. there's not even the shadow of a loving mentor as with spiderman's uncle joe and no guiding credo like, "with great power comes great responsibility." matt tries to impose rules along these lines, but steve doesn't need an explicit moral code and andrew...is a product of his home life. the movie doesn't exactly say that it's already too late to turn andrew around, but the story also doesn't present him with a role model he might try emulate. matt just isn't enough.

i'm not sure the character development could have been much more while keeping the movie engaging. although, at 1.5 hours they could have added 30 more minutes and done tons more. seems like the director was trying to make a story that today's teens could understand. for the past 15 years or so, real life has been 'high school underdog turns to mass murder or suicide.'

i like that even without a sequel this is like an origin story for matt to be a superman character. it felt a lot like "district 9" in that you're just dying to see what happens next. where is this going? what are they talking about? how in the hell are they going to get out of this?!

the three actors were fantastic. i've never seen matt and steve before (i think) but they were just fantastic. i'm looking forward to seeing all of them in the future. i'm putting this up alongside "attack the block."

great review! very thoughtful.
February 12, 2012 10:49 AM

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