Chronicle

Saw Chronicle (thanks, Susan!) It followed Andy, a troubled kid with an abusive (step?)father and sick-n-dying mother. He and two other (apparently 30 year old) teenagers happen upon a mysterious, glowing rock in a cave and gain telekinetic abilities. This can only end well. They refine their powers and joke around, mainly using their abilities for pranks. I kept waiting for the trio to start thinking about becoming super-heroes or just, you know, do something with their abilities. They wind up bending their super-powers to the task of making Andy popular and, for a while, succeed.

I remember seeing the trailer for this film and it seemed like it was being marketed as a slight deconstruction of the super-hero genre. Well and good, but this does the film a slight disservice. It is more a teenage power-fantasy (although it is not exactly that either.) It played as a sort of tragedy for me. With my bleeding heart, I wanted Andy to be cared for and loved, but <spoiler>as the film went on, it became more and more clear that this was not going to happen. The film was ultimately more interested in creating and defeating a compelling bad guy than saving the innocent</spoiler>. I don't know how else the film could have ended, however, without feeling like it was cheating us in some way.

Also, when the film ended, I felt like chapter 2 was left as yet unwritten. Do the boys go on to change the world? They claim they will some day, but we never see it. Think how interesting a film about superheroes saving the world would be, if they were to save it from want and poverty. I think I just really wanted this to turn into Miracle Man (which is excellent if you haven't read it.)

The film is also composed entirely of 'found footage' from Andy's camera, and later from news reports. This is a little annoying and seems unnecessary, although some neat visual effects are mined from it. Every time the camera floats out of Andy's hands it seems a little magic. But I wish the film had just adopted the omniscient eye that most movies do.

Make no mistake, I enjoy the film a lot as it stands. It has interesting and believable characters in fantastic situations and usually you get only one or the other. It would have been interesting had it been slightly different, but the same can be said of every film.