The best way to describe Chronicle is The Blair Witch Project meets X-Men.
Shot documentary-style (also called a “mockumentary”), Chronicle er, um, chronicles (pardon the repetition) a lonely misfit named Andrew (Dane DeHaan, who looks like a young Leonardo DiCaprio). Alone, friendless and socially awkward, Andrew is picked on mercilessly by the bullies at his Seattle-based high school and his unemployed, physically and verbally abusive alcoholic father. To add to his burden, his mother is dying of cancer.
In an effort to fit in, Andrew purchases a video camera and records everything in sight. This leads to some very agonizingly slow moments in the film. His cousin Matt (Alex Russell) takes Andrew to a rave, where he sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. Along with Steve the cool kid (Michael B. Jordan), the three discover a meteor not too far from the rave and touch it.
Before too long, they realize they’ve gained super-powers from this close encounter. All of them possess telekinesis, the ability to move things with your mind. Andrew is by far the strongest. The three become BFFs, and they document their newly-discovered powers via Andrew’s video camera.
They also discover that they can fly in a very cool sequence that catches the three flying through the clouds and nearly getting struck by an airplane. This scene is very well done and is very expensive-looking, a stark contrast from the film’s B-level, low-budget mockumentary trappings, which catches the audience off-guard.
At first, they play harmless pranks on people, such as telekinetically moving a customer’s car to a different parking space at a local five and dime. From there, it only escalates. Andrew uses his powers to run a tailgater off the road, nearly killing him. Matt and Steve tell him that they cannot use their powers publicly like that, nor can they use them on another human being. Rules need to be established.
Realizing that Andrew won’t listen, Matt and Steve stage an intervention of sorts.
In effort to help Andrew get some creds with the popular crowd, Steve gets him a part in the school talent show. Andrew uses his telekinetic powers to pick up playing cards and walk the tightrope. His classmates are impressed, and Andrew suddenly becomes the big man on campus.
However, his newfound fame is fleeting because at the after party, he gets drunk and vomits all over this girl who’s interested in him. Word spreads like wild fire, and Andrew is back to being the campus joke. This time around, he won’t take it and uses his powers to exact revenge on his tormentors. With one bully, he yanks three of his teeth out. He also beats the tar out of his old man after the latter hits him for the final time.
It’s quite clear that Andrew doesn’t follow Spider-Man’s “With great powers comes great responsibility” motto. Without realizing it, he follows Lord Acton’s quote: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Andrew is so far gone and so drunk on his own power that he doesn’t even care if innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire. Given no choice, Matt realizes he has to put him down in an otherwise spectacular aerial battle all over Seattle.
This niche movie is a super-hero movie without capes and without the word “super-hero” ever being mentioned. This is decidedly different.

GRADE: B