The new film “Chronicles” combines the super hero and found footage craze and questions how a generation co-dependent on social networking would handle the responsibility of superpowers.
Writer Max Landis (“The Death and Return of Superman”) and director Josh Trank (“The Kill Point”) created a fun action movie that takes your imagination to what could be the beginning of superheroes, chronicling the story through every day recording devices.
Three high school students are given superpowers after discovering what looks like an alien artifact at a party.
Playing pranks and practicing tricks in their backyards leads them to creating rules to protect themselves from harming each other and others. The school’s student president, the cool kid and the outcast have to face the inevitable question in every super hero movie: good or evil? Or in the case of the outcast: the weak or the strong?
I’ve always been a big fan of the found footage style used in movies like “Cloverfield” and the “Paranormal Activity” films. Although it’s kind of becoming formatted thanks to other movies like the sci-fi hit “District 9,” found footage does make things a little bit more inartificial and adds to the suspense of the action. Viewers are put in the characters shoes and physically apart of the story.
People today really do record almost everything they do through video blogs, Facebook and YouTube. The writer and director took that and used it to film the movie and tell its story. Through the majority of the movie you see everything through the outcast’s camera, but when someone else with a recording device is around you get to experience the story through their recording devices.
If you’re worried “Chronicles” is going to be full of shaky and scrambled camera shots, don’t worry. They really aren’t that bad. The outcast’s obsession with recording everything and his eventual ability to lift and direct its movements creates scenes that are interactive and common place in most movies.
Initially the filming begins because of the abuse inflicted from his parents, but the outcast begins to carry his camera around like a stuffed bear. When he begins to develop his powers he then positions the camera around taking it from a first-person perspective to a third-person point of view.
If you like superhero movies and you can tolerate the found footage style used today in a growing number of movies, then “Chronicles” is for you. You will laugh at the pranks the characters do, and it will also make you think about how important social networks are to people today. If you could lift objects up from thin air and fly, what would you record yourself doing, and would you really want anyone else to know? Hell yeah you would!
