Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHann), by just about anybody’s definition, has a crap life. His mom (Bo Peterson) is dying and spends most of her day howling in pain, his old man (Michael Kelly) is a stumbling drunk and spends most of his day knocking Andrew upside his head, he has no friends, thus no girlfriend, and is routinely beat up at his local high school. You can tell already that this is the last guy on the planet earth that needs super powers. Oh, and Andrew has brought a video camera and from this point on has taken to obnoxiously chronicling everything that is going on in his crap life, and now this movie ‘Chronicle’ has it’s launching point.

Andrew does have one friend, kind of, in his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and Matt tries his best to help his cuz along by giving him rides to school and taking him to parties and stuff, but Andrew is kind of weird one, and admittedly that camera he’s dragging along is starting to grate on a nerve.

Then comes the day of the party. Steve (Michael B. Jordan), the most popular kid in school, and cousin Matt find a hole in the ground. Big deal right? Not to these two nutty kids so they grab the guy who brought the video camera to the party, whose sitting on the front lawn of this party right now crying like a baby because some guy just spit on him… crap life… and these three set about recording whatever is in the weird hole in the ground. Not surprisingly Andrew doesn’t want to do this because he’s not the bravest kid in the bunch, whining every step of the way, but Steve on the other hand is nothing if not adventurous and down the hole they go. We don’t know exactly what that glowing thing was in that hole, we’re guessing it was something alien-like, then a few bloody noses and blackouts later, Steve, Andrew and Matt’s life will never be the same.

Now these three kids have the powers to move things with their minds, and if you can imagine being seventeen and all of the sudden getting super powers, there can’t be much of anything cooler than that and this is one of the things that ‘Chronicle’ captures just about perfectly. So these kids can move stuff, little things at first, but the more they use stronger they get. And since it’s just these three youths and their powers, and they learn to fly by the way, the bro-love grows sky high with these three.

But we know it can’t stay that way don’t we? For starters Andrew’s life has turned all kinds of awesome right now, and we’ve spent enough quality time with Andrew to know that ‘awesome’ and ‘Andrew’s Life’ are two words that just don’t go well together. Plus, out of the three of them, Andrew’s powers seem to be taking to him a little quicker than the others, so when the stuff hits the fan, and boy… does it hit the fan… Andrew is going to be hell to deal with, Seattle is going to be short a few building and a few more citizens, and when the smoke clears the teenage superhero population of three is about to be considerably reduced.

Directed by Josh Trank, I have to say ‘Chronicle’ is twelve million dollars well spent. The only reason I’m familiar with the budget is because my son theorized that the movie cost way more than that, considering the filmmakers decimated a large portion of Seattle Washington, which had to be expensive, but I explained to the boy that most of the expense in these movies comes from paying movie stars, movie stars which this movie didn’t have, which I think helps sell the audience on the characters. Zach Efron would’ve blown the budget anyway, know what I’m saying? Initially, upon seeing that the story telling device used was going to be Point of View / Found Footage, I was a little concerned if only because this technique is becoming slightly over used, but the style worked out well… even though I think the story wouldn’t have suffered that much if the movie was conventionally staged and framed. The main characters and their personalities are clear, concise and were well drawn, the grown men playing these teenage kids were damn near flawless in their presentation of these characters, all of which helps draw us into the story since the characters act and feel like real live human beings doing real live human stuff. This made for a film, at least for the first half, that was a lot of fun to sit through.

Then ‘Chronicle’ went where we all knew it had to go. This part of the film is a double edged sword for me personally, because Andrew’s descent into Carrie-ville was presented well and handled properly, and this is the part of the movie where the special effects budget got pushed to max, but the path it followed had too much of a familiar feel for me. Just once I’d like see one of these types of films where the loser kid with the horrible upbringing doesn’t go completely bonkers and deals with his or her myriad of issues in a different way. What way is that? Beats the hell out of me, but that’s what the screenwriter is for. Max Landis, who wrote this script, did a fine job with it, especially the dialog and the relationships between the boys, but the third act felt as if it was turned over to F/X gurus while our clever script writer went out and got a mocha latte. Oh, and my high school aged son informed me that no way, no how would some high school allow some kid to walk around this school videotaping everything. Unless of course Seattle High School’s are different. Besides, this high school was apparently adult free since the only adults of note we ever saw in this movie were the dying mom and the jerkoff dad anyway. Best High School Ever.

Good movie though. An original concept… more or less… great characters, good action, nice effects, all wrapped around teen angst. I don’t know how they’re going to squeeze a sequel out of this, I mean it’s not setup this way, but as good as this was and as economical as it was, you know it’s coming.