Count me among those grateful that the found footage era of movie making is over.  Like some, I thought the original,The Blair Witch Project (1999), to be pretty good the first time I saw it.  When it came out, the buzz was that you were watching the actual recordings of three people lost in the woods who (spoiler alert, I guess) die of supernatural causes.  After it became widely known that it was just a new way of doing a film, the luster wore off.  The problem, though, is that Hollywood remained interested in this mode of storytelling long past their audiences.  You can understand the appeal for a studio executive.  They are usually much cheaper to produce, with The Blair Witch Project costing less than $1,000,000, but grossing nearly $250,000,000.  That is a good return on investment.  This profit margin is not one enjoyed by every example from this subgenre, especially as they waned in popularity.  Today’s review, Chronicle (2012), came towards the end of their run and turned a nice profit for a lower budget.  In many respects, one can look at this piece as representative of the entire run of found footage films.

High school senior Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) decides to begin to Chronicle his life.  Right away, you can tell that there are some issues.  He points it at the door to his room on a tripod, but is soon interrupted by his drunk father, Richard Detmer (Michael Kelly) pounding on his door.  Richard is an alcoholic, so this often happens.  The next morning, Andrew is taking the camera with him to school, but he stops to say hello to his dying mother, Karen Detmer (Bo Petersen).  So, his home life is not great.  As for his education, he is driven to school by his philosophical-minded cousin, Matt Garetty (Alex Russell), with whom Andrew does not get along with all the time.  Finally, he is bullied, which leads to him sitting alone while eating lunch.  The fact that he has his camera going all the time does not help his social standing.  Matt does attempt to help his cousin with this situation by taking him to a rave at an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Seattle.  Andrew, of course, has his video recorder with him, which brings him some strange looks and threats.  Wishing to avoid trouble, he retreats outside.  This is where he is found by Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan), the class president and all-around nice guy.  He encourages Andrew to join him and Matt in investigating a hole in the ground that they found not far from where the party is taking place.  Andrew has misgivings, but since Matt is his ride, he follows them down into it despite the weird emanations coming from it.  Once at the bottom, they are confronted by a large glowing crystal that they all touch, and which apparently knocks them out.  Somehow, they find their way out because the next thing we see are the three of them experimenting with the telekinetic powers imbued on them by the strange rock.  At first, it is stilly stuff like learning to stop a baseball they throw at each other or building Legos without using their hands.  Of all of them, Andrew seems to pick up on how to use their powers easiest.  Being teenagers, as their powers grow they move on to going around town and playing pranks on people, like moving carts away from shoppers at a nearby department store.  The first issue comes as they are driving home one day and are being harassed by somebody riding close to the rear bumper of Matt’s car.  With a wave of his hand, Andrew sends the annoying vehicle careening off the road, where it lands upside down in a pond at the bottom of a hill.  They stop to help, though Andrew does not understand why they should do so, with Matt and Steve jumping into the water to save the driver.  After this, over Andrew’s protests, Matt decides that they must make rules for how they use their abilities, such as not affecting people or displaying them in public.  All the while, Andrew is not paying much attention to matters at home, though he does spend some time with his mom.  During one of these visits, she makes him say that he is stronger than this, this being her condition.  He complies with her request, but he begins to take it in a direction she did not intend.  Nonetheless, they continue to explore what they can do with their telekinesis, eventually discovering that they can fly.  Feeling that it is time to do something about Andrew’s social standing, Steve suggests that he and Andrew enter the school talent show together.  Andrew performs a number of tricks that are taken to be magic, but it also earns him a great deal of popularity.  This includes attention from a girl at a party afterwards, but when it comes time for them to make out in a room alone, he ends up throwing up on her. This brings back all the awkwardness he had.  He is also confronted by Richard, and in the ensuing brawl throws his father across the room.  This unleashes a great deal of emotion in him, which produces a lightning storm.  Unfortunately, because of the connection between the three, Steve flies up to investigate and is killed by a bolt of lightning.  Matt later confronts Andrew about this, and their relationship becomes strained.  Deciding that he is now an “apex predator,” Andrew decides to begin robbing people in order to pay for his mother’s medicine.  This includes knocking over a gas station, almost literally, the result of him mentally batting a shotgun out of the attendant’s hand and having it shoot at a propane tank.  Andrew is forced to go to the hospital, where Richard visits him to tell him that Karen has died.  Richard blames his son and starts shouting at an unconscious Andrew.  He soon wakes up and goes berserk.  He blows out his hospital room and proceeds to wreck parts of downtown Seattle.  The only person who can stop him is Matt, who reluctantly puts a projectile through his cousin while Andrew is distracted.  Instead of waiting for the authorities, Matt then takes off.  The last we see of him, and this film, is him in the Tibetan Himalayas, a place Andrew had wanted to visit.

Chronicle is one of the best examples of a film that underscores why I do not think it would be a good idea for us mortals to have god-like abilities.  Never mind the juvenile pranks they play around town, or even causing another car to go off the road.  The fact that a person like Andrew could do what he did with the emotional scars he carries is enough for me to be glad that all humans are created equal in the eyes of God, and lesser than Him, of course.  One might argue, though, that Matt is the counterargument to this fanciful discussion.  Admittedly, I was getting annoyed with his philosophizing early on, which seemed to be a front to make him look more intellectual.  It is proved a façade when he participates in the juvenile behavior of Andrew and Steve.  What saves him is his desire to help people.  It is more than just his positing that he believes in altruism.  He goes on to state that he wants to make things better for others, which is as good a definition of altruism as any.  For all his playing at Plato and Schopenhauer, he puts his ideas to practice by trying to help the endangered driver and by proposing guidelines for their powers.  It comes to its apotheosis in his final duel with Andrew.  While they crash through buildings and are confronted by police, Matt does everything he can to keep others from being hurt.  I like to think that if a true, practicing Christian gained such abilities, this is how they would behave.  After all, the imperative to do good for others is found throughout the Bible.  Of course, the film makes no reference to Christianity.  Indeed, there would be those who would say that people being able to fly or move things with their mind would be proof that God does not exist.  To that I would point to the levitating St. Joseph of Cupertino.

I found Chronicle to be fairly interesting, despite the annoyance of found footage, until Andrew started to become unhinged.  Ironically enough, this is when it also gets interesting in terms of Matt’s commitment to helping others.  The reason it gets dumb is because I could see no logical reason for Andrew to keep filming as he did.  Had this been shot in a traditional manner, it might have been a better film.