Chronicle

Another great movie of 2012 and it's barely February!
I was quite looking forward to seeing this movie after catching the impressive trailer and discovering John Landis' son, Max was behind the script. For those of you who don't know, John Landis is responsible for the only great werewolf film thus far, 'An American Werewolf in London'. To discover Max had followed his father into a similarly genre bending project was encouraging, to say the least.
This is a found-footage movie of sorts. This time(as audiences become increasingly 'aware') we're expected to understand the format and follow without a written prologue or information as to the discovery of said footage. This film would've benefited from a little opening text in my opinion, but that's something the film-makers chose to exclude.
This movie 'chronicles' the exploits of three teenage boys who discover they have telekinetic powers, after an incident underground. Two of the boys are popular, while the third is shy and introverted - with major domestic problems to boot.
I believe the main problem these types of movies face is convincing it's audience that certain characters will always be filming, regardless of circumstance. For the most part these films carry the concept off, but I feel there's always a few moments here and there which require a further suspension of disbelief - and a consequence of this is the audiences brief removal from proceedings.
This is a good movie regardless of it's sub-genre. The second half of the movie cranks up the spectacle to 11 and is breathless in it's execution.
It made me think of all the super-hero movies past and forth-coming and how they've yet to capture the threat and danger of super-beings in our cities, as Chronicle does!
Perhaps the found-footage element makes the appearance of super-beings seem more real - perhaps even the switch from New York to Seattle in this movie makes events seem less iconic and more grounded in reality? I believe the only previous movie to succeed in creating a similar atmosphere is Superman 2.
Chronicle is a lot of fun with an emotional core to keep things interesting - 4/5!