Chronicle: An anti-hero take on the superhero movie?

Josh Trank and Mark Landis' Chronicle tells the story of three friends who gain telekinetic powers after coming in contact with a mysterious object in an underground cave. What is the object? Where did it come from? We may never know unless there's a sequel or prequel, and I'm guessing the probability is high. The film centers on troubled teen Andrew (I promise, you will never forget his name) who is bullied at home and at school and spends much of his time caring for his terminally ill mother. Though one cannot help feeling sympathy for Andrew and sadness at his spiraling decline, the film largely suffers from obstacles relating to the simple idea of suspension of disbelief that interfere with what would otherwise be a compelling examination of bullying, rage and revenge.

Andrew isn't a bad kid. We can see that in how he cares for his mother and endures the abuses of his alcoholic father. He's a loner and an outcast. The other kids at school make fun of him and push him around. The audience readily sympathizes with him. Andrew's charismatic cousin Matt tries hard to draw Andrew out of his shell and to lend him some emotional support. He's likable, even if he seems to be the dumb, jockish type. Matt eventually attempts to be Andrew's moral compass, but in doing so overreaches and further alienates Andrew. It is likely Matt's seeming betrayal that helped push Andrew past the point of no return, leading to his downfall.

Boiled down to its basic elements, Chronicle is a wish-fulfillment story. It's about revenge. Anyone who has ever been bullied can empathize with Andrew. Deep down, the bullied all want to strike back at those who have victimized them. The idea of a bullied loner gaining superpowers and suddenly turning the tables on his foes is nothing new. Peter Parker, after all, suffered the abuses of the jocks at his school before becoming Spider-Man. The key difference between Parker and Andrew is that Peter eventually realized that he shouldn't, couldn't, use his powers for petty reasons. In Andrew's defense, it is obvious that he has no control over the forces that drag him into despair and hatred.

After the death of his mother, Andrew finds himself utterly alone against the entire world. He strikes out at everyone around him, including his friends. His descent into madness is as much accident as it is intentional. Andrew sometimes does things with his new-found powers accidentally—with disastrous results. Though it is the death of his mother and Matt's betrayal that tip him over the brink, it is other events that ultimately lead to his destruction.

Matt and Steve, Andrew's new friend, attempt to draw Andrew out of his cocoon, to make him popular, to pull him away from his outcast, loner past. Their intentions are good, but because of Andrew's fragile emotional state, the manipulation is a formula for disaster. Steve succeeds in bringing Andrew out of the shadows into the light and even makes him the life of the party. One bad experience, however, throws Andrew back into the old role of outcast. The humiliation sends him deeper into darkness. He is soon overcome with shadow. His anger has taken control and become the driving force in his life.

Anyone who has seen the trailers for the movie knows that things go bad. In a typical play off the classic superhero formula, one superpowered individual is left to play the hero against the one who has gone bad. Matt and Andrew fight it out in an epic, Avengers-style smash-up. It's entertaining, but it also feels like something of an insult to the serious theme at the heart of the story. Destroying cars and buildings and generally making a mess of things is fine popcorn fare, but what happened to the in-depth character study? You can't round out this character's story just by breaking a bunch of things. Something more sober is needed here.

Chronicle ambitiously attempts to find balance among three different elements: bringing the pseudo-documentary style to the superhero genre, taking a serious look at the psychological and emotional effects of bullying and telling an anti-hero story in the superhero genre. The real problem with this approach is that each tends to step on the toes of another. It's difficult to tell a superhero story using this first-person, unedited footage approach. The special effects required to pull it off also undermine its credibility in the same way the computer-generated monsters in every Syfy movie render the stories preposterous.

I was fully engaged with the film while it trod familiar paths of the three friends experimenting with their telekinetic abilities. The pranks were well in keeping with the anti-superhero theme. If Chronicle were a typical, mainstream comic-book from the 1960s, these three would no doubt have donned costumes, given themselves some catchy superhero team name and rushed off to do good with their powers. This, however, is a more cynical—and arguably more realistic—take on an old idea. What if teenagers gained telekinetic powers? In truth, they would likely do a lot of what these guys did: move people's cars around, pull the bubble gum out of someone's mouth and become experts at beer pong.

The movie started to lose me when the three were suddenly flying and playing football high up in the clouds. Whether this is plausible in the context of telekinetic superpowers is irrelevant; it reaches beyond the bounds of the story being told. And the movie does drag a bit as the three explore the limits of and grow into their powers. The story seems to get lost for a while. When it finally wakes from its reverie, it's a bit late. The audience just wants it to be over.

It's also when the movie gets back on track that all of the yelling starts and you wonder if you've suddenly tuned in to a TV reality show in which everyone hates each other and is constantly bickering. "Andrew, stop! It's not too late! Andrew, this is not you!" And that's how it goes for the final ten minutes of the movie until Matt finally saves the day.

In some ways, I applaud what Chronicle attempts to accomplish. At the core it's a serious and engaging story. Andrew is a sympathetic and empathetic character whose destructive descent is often poignant. The attempt to play too much with the superhero genre, however, causes the story to get lost and, like Andrew, morph into something it never should have become.