Ant Reviews: Chronicle (2012)

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

So I complain about the constant youtube ads for Chronicle on my Facebook. Then my friend Roma calls and complains that he, too, is getting annoyed that every time he watches something on youtube he’s forced to watch 15 seconds of that damn mini trailer. We both hate the use of that Jessie J song, just that little snippet. The one that goes

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-ChingCha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the world dance….

And how every time we have to watch a youtube clip we end up with that infernal song stuck in our heads. It’s not just the song that’s annoying, it’s that little tiny sliver of the chorus that really fucking gets to me. Roma says he hates the bit when Michael B. Jordan goes ‘YEAH’ just after that little bit. I was starting to really hate the dimples in Alex Russell’s cheeks, and how he rubs his fingers as if to say MONEH. No fault to him or the film makers, it was just a simple laugh in the film, overblown to excessive extremes in (what is now) a successful internet marketing campaign. But Roma and I couldn’t help but hear that fucking song, just that little clip of the chorus, playing over and over and over again as we watched the film. And I’m not exaggerating.

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

 So just to let you know, that’s where I’m coming from when I review this movie.

The film starts promisingly enough, where the conceit of the camera is introduced so that the main character Andrew (Dale DeHaan) makes sure that his Dad (Michael Kelly) wont come in and hit him while the camera is recording. Thus begins our insight into Andrew’s tortured world, the life of an American teenager and all that it brings. It’s a little bit of a white man’s Akira, with troubled teens seeking popularity and mental powers and lashing out. Since the trailer the main plot, and how the characters get their powers, reminds me of a 1999 X-Files episode called Rush, where 20-somethings pretending to be teens break into a mysterious cave and get superpowers. In both cases the actual getting of the powers is never explained, though in The X-Files they got superspeed instead of telekinesis.

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

I couldn’t get over how Andrew looked like my friend Josh, to the point of distraction. DeHaan is convincing enough, for a guy a year younger than me too act and look like a teenager. Michael B Jordan is great, a surprisingly warm character under all the high school popularity. Michael Kelly is always great, he’s a good actor at playing difficult characters. One masterful scene has us side with the abusive dad for a moment, understanding and relating to the pressure he’s under and the way he lashes out, but soon we hate his guts again because he’s genuinely an irredeemably a prick.

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

 

Josh Trank’s direction is a bit hit and miss, and by that I mean that the handheld camera conceit gets in the way sometimes. Often when watching handheld movies I just wish that everything be third person again, so that we can just absorb events and not have to judge whether or not the conceit is still strong in some scenes. It seems odd that Andrew would record everything, and while the other characters acknowledge that, sometimes it stretches credibility. Why must he record everything? We know he had the camera to record his father’s abuse, but that doesn’t really stop him later on. Who will he show this footage too. And with the use of the other cameras scattered throughout the film, I’m unsure what the final cut of the movie is: is it a collection of events, a chronicle to document the events of the characters, and if so who compiled and arranged the footage? If it is some kind of abstract move, and simply a filmmakers conceit to insist that the whole film be shot on cameras that are in the story itself? Is it a statement that our whole world is recorded on tape? I hardly think that’s the main message of the film, as it has little to do with the plot in that sense. It would have been better without the constrictions of the handheld conceit, and though the final action sequence was innovative, it would have been great not to have to wonder how we were going to have a camera show record events. And I mean, why is Andrew filming himself mugging some losers on his street. Does that make sense?

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

There were some good bits that challenged my expectations a little. Some of the scenes where the main characters test out their abilities were fun and convincing. The interactions between Andrew and Steve (Jordan) were nice, considering how badly Andrew had been treated by everyone around him. Some of the abuse scenes hit a little to close to home for me, and were unpleasant in that they were real, which is a compliment. There is a great scene where Andrew and Steve hold a talent show segment with Andrew’s powers, which gains him popularity and girls. It was well done and had a nice tone to it.

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

But I had a problem with the plot. This is where I’m afraid I’m going to have to delve into spoilers. 

SPOILERS BEGIN

Ultimately Andrew is beaten down to the point that he lashes out and destroys stuff. He starts killing people and raging, and his cousin Matt has to kill him. There is a subplot of the film where Andrew suggested they all fly to Tibet to discover inner peace and enlightenment. This is his dream; his escape from the harshness of life and a Middle American teen. The film ends with Matt landing in Tibet, honouring Andrew by completing his quest for peace. This bothered the fuck out of me, and it felt cruel and wasteful. That’s when the movie lost a star in my opinion.

I don’t understand what message they’re trying to send with this film. We follow Andrew, his plight, his rise and fall. We empathize with him, we associate with him, we wish to see how the film ends for his sake. His life is rough, and nothing really works out for him. He’s a little quiet, but not really a sinner. He responds to the abuse that he’s put through, and with power he finally stands up for himself and makes something of himself. He meets a good friend in Steve, who introduces him to high school popularity, and he gets this close to being blown, until he throws up on the girl to his private and public humiliation. Nothing works out for him and it’s terrible. He dresses up in his fathers old fireman gear (a symbol of a fallen hero that his father has become, but I doubt that the filmmakers were getting deep on that particular point) and he engages on a brief life of crime to get money for drugs his mother needs before getting blown up, then his mother dies and his father blames him. When Andrew finally cuts loose and rampages, we’re on his side and understand his plight. We want him to overcome. But he never does. He dies a loser. 

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

In the end it’s Matt that’s left standing, much to my chagrin. He’s the least well-developed character of the piece, boring to a point. Suddenly he’s portrayed as a (Kaneda-esque) Hero to Andrew’s (Tetsuo-esque) Villain, with very little preparation to establish him as such prior to the final battle. And I don’t know what that means to the audience or what the filmmakers are trying to say to with his tragic triumph over his cousing. See, Matt is a reasonably popular, reasonalbly normal kid from a presumably healthy home, and is richer than Andrew seeing as he owns a car and drives Andrew to school every day. There is a hot blonde (Ashley Hinshaw) who also videotapes everything, who we first meet as she’s flirting with Andrew. Matt cockblocks, and ends up with her. And again, Matt kills Andrew and stands on the side of the angels, interrupting Andrew’s justified explosion of power and also negating any hard-earned redemption and peace, a peace that he ends up claiming on Andrew’s behalf at the film’s conclusion. Is that the message? If you’re shat on your whole life, you’ll end up a loser and die a loser, and if you have a good life you’ll end up being ok in the end? As my mate Roma said quite succinctly at the end of the film: “If you’re a loser, don’t try and follow the winners path.”

SPOILERS END

…Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the wooorld dance….

I’m going to take a stab at why I think they did what they did. I think they tried to make a superhero movie without making a superhero movie. And I think in their attempts at keeping things real and unlike a superhero film they ended up stumbling upon something with a bit more worth, this story of a troubled teen’s life. And in their attempts at trying to go back to the superhero story they ended up ruining any goodwill they’d established, and all the fine character moments they’d crafted in order to solidify their main characters into comic book archetypes.

This film, in my mind, suffered the same thing Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) did. In that they had interesting characters and contexts, great, innovative ideas and approaches, subverting what we’d come to expect from well known narratives and concepts. Then when Evans is in the proper Captain outfit, doing proper superhero things, the film gets bored and wraps things up in a jiffy. That’s what happened here with Chronicle: the superhero film elements ruined the superhero film.

So yeah, what would have been an interesting teen sci fi drama is instead a failed superhero movie. That ending really annoyed me. I would have liked to see Andrew overcome his rage, over come his surroundings, and to find the inner peace his tortured soul desired. Seeing as the film is a morality tale about the dangers of power, perhaps if he’d overcome his problems without his powers, to well and truly triumph over adversity. It would have paved the way for a true sequel, not the half-assed one they’d end up making with the surviving characters. Cos in the end it really is about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching, it is about the Ba-Bling Ba-Bling. We all wanna make the wooorld dance….

**stars

PS my friend Roma hated the movie. Couldn’t get over that fucking youtube campaign. Who could blame him?