By BEN DAUBER
Movie Reviewer
[email protected]

Heading into the film, I was skeptical. Given a title like Chronicle, a focus on teen angst and a PG-13 rating, I was prepared for the worst.

I admittedly wanted to head for the door during the first 15 minutes, but once I got into the meat of the film Chronicle grabbed my interest and never let go.

Director Josh Trank took a group of B-list TV starlets and an incredibly commercialized platform and churned out a surprisingly praiseworthy film.

Chronicle defies two of my often fail-proof film rules: 1) Teens discovering some sort of superpower is a no-no 2) Handheld style of filming (e.g. The Blair Witch Project) more often leads to headaches than good times.

One thing Trank did well was comprehensively explore the “power” the characters discover. Scenes of the characters fooling around with their abilities are some of the most entertaining in the film.

The other thing the filmmakers did incredibly well was to avoid the Cloverfield syndrome.

Cloverfield (2008) was a film that I would have left incredibly angry, if I hadn’t already been incredibly nauseous. The reason for my post-film condition was due to the abuse of the hand held camera technique that has recently become popular.

A shaky camera that constantly pans from left to right and remains obnoxiously out of focus intentionally does not make up for a lack of substance in a film.

The makers of Chronicle realized this and, rather than attempting to fool the audience into some false suspense with shoddy camera work, they were surprisingly creative in their filming.

Scoring a more than solid 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, Chronicle has not only captured 22.0M in the box office but has also impressed the critics.

A solid watch for the action depraved no doubt, but if you want to watch a real man’s movie I still suggest seeing The Grey.