Marshall and the Movies

Oh, found footage movies, whatever are we going to do with you?  With every new movie, you seem to reinvent your own rules.  Everyone just has to be an iconoclast, I suppose.

In “Chronicle,” the story of three teenagers magically endowed with superpowers, the camera begins as a small handheld camera documenting the mundane happenings of life.  But then the perspective widens. By the climactic fight scene, we are taking it in from every lens possible, be it a police car or a building security camera.

In a way, it makes sense for the number of cameras to grow as the magnitude of these three high schoolers’ decisions with their powers begins to affect people beyond the personal scale.  In a movie like “Project X,” the action never really expands to such a wide scope, and it feels a little odd when the cameras begin to act as such.  Yet even with a relatively justifiable reason to switch up the shooting style, “Chronicle” widens its lens at the expense of some of the intimacy that the found footage subgenre is designed to provide.  And as such, it loses the punch of an “End of Watch” or “Paranormal Activity.”

But in terms of pushing the form beyond a single camera, I don’t think anyone has done it better than director Josh Trank.  His “Chronicle” doesn’t hide behind the format as a front for lazy filmmaking.  He uses the camera to provide a naturalistic portrait of high schoolers struggling with their issues, just on an extremely heightened scale.  With close-ups and tight framing, Trank is able to pierce the psyche.

Trank is also fortunate to not only have the camera as his only weapon.  “Chronicle” also features a thoughtful screenplay by Max Landis that resists mere surface-level discussions and childish gimmickry.  He manages to make the relationships feel authentic and the events feel real even when they delve into the realm of the fantastic.

Much of the success of the film can also be credited to the trio of young actors, Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan, who establish relationships that we feel extend far beyond what we see on the screen.  They make the film feel as if we just happened to stumble into their friendship on any ordinary day … and then it just happens to turn extraordinary.  B /