Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.
Credits: TheMovieDb.
Film Cast:
- Andrew Detmer: Dane DeHaan
- Matt Garetty: Alex Russell
- Steve Montgomery: Michael B. Jordan
- Richard Detmer: Michael Kelly
- Monica: Anna Wood
- Casey Letter: Ashley Grace
- Michael Ernesto: Joe Vaz
- Samantha: Crystal-Donna Roberts
- Sean: Luke Tyler
- Karen Detmar (voice): Daisy Tormé
- Austin (voice): Matt Nolan
- Park Ranger (voice): Popeye Vogelsang
- Police Officer (voice): Steve Kramer
- School Flyer Girl (voice): Ashley Peldon
- Priest (voice): Paul Pape
- Thug (voice): Jeff Fischer
- Howard (voice): Byron Thames
Film Crew:
- Casting: Ronna Kress
- Producer: John Davis
- Supervising Art Director: Johnny Breedt
- Production Design: Stephen Altman
- Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Tony Lamberti
- Set Decoration: Fred Du Preez
- Costume Design: Diana Cilliers
- Casting Associate: Bonnie Rodini
- Key Grip: Matt Almas
- Digital Imaging Technician: Mitch Bax
- Producer: Adam Schroeder
- Executive Producer: James Dodson
- ADR Mixer: Mark DeSimone
- Sound Mixer: Conrad Kuhne
- Director of Photography: Matthew Jensen
- Story: Max Landis
- ADR Mixer: Ron Bedrosian
- Foley Artist: James Moriana
- Foley Artist: Jeffrey Wilhoit
- ADR Recordist: Greg Zimmerman
- Director: Josh Trank
- Editor: Elliot Greenberg
- Digital Intermediate: Paul Lavoie
- Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Joe Barnett
- Sound Effects Editor: Kerry Ann Carmean
- Visual Effects Camera: Chad Wilson
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Sean Findley
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Robert Habros
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Simon Hansen
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Andrew Karr
- Visual Effects: Sergey Muraviev
- Casting Associate: Leslie Woo
- Epk Producer: Pip Ayers
- Gaffer: John McKay
- Publicist: Dezi Rorich
- “A” Camera Operator: Peter Belcher
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Bryan Godwin
- Sound Designer: Tim Walston
- Sound Designer: Karen Vassar Triest
- Storyboard Artist: Troy Morgan
- Visual Effects Producer: Alexandr Gorokhov
- Hair Department Head: Megan Tanner
- Costume Supervisor: Jacomina Jankowitz
- Casting Assistant: Noa Franco
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Dennis Sedov
- Visual Effects Producer: Kathy Chasen-Hay
- Assistant Costume Designer: Jayne Forbes
- Visual Effects Editor: John Berri
- Digital Intermediate Colorist: Walter Volpatto
- Visual Effects Production Manager: Pauline Burns
- First Assistant Editor: Matt Tassone
- Visual Effects Producer: Terry Hutcheson
- ADR Mixer: Greg Steele
- Still Photographer: Alan Markfield
- Visual Effects Art Director: Chris Grun
- Location Manager: Danny McWilliams
- Art Direction: Patrick O’Connor
- Key Makeup Artist: Simone Stubbs
- Key Hair Stylist: Francesca Van Der Feyst
- Production Manager: Marisa Soneman
- Production Manager: Drew Locke
- Art Department Coordinator: Andrew Sheel
- Assistant Art Director: Cecelia van Straaten
- Greensman: Clint Gordon
- Property Master: Willow Howell
- Leadman: Michael Rossouw
- Set Designer: Vivienne Gray
- Visual Effects Editor: Simon Assekritov
- Visual Effects Producer: Sergei Gritsenko
- Visual Effects Producer: Victoria Plis
- Visual Effects Producer: David Van Dyke
- Visual Effects Producer: Balakrishnan
- Visual Effects Supervisor: Raymond Chen
- Stunt Coordinator: Kerry Gregg
- Second Unit Director of Photography: Grant Appleton
- “B” Camera Operator: Dale Rodkin
- Gaffer: J.S. Mackay
- Rigging Gaffer: Tell Reid
- First Assistant Editor: Tessa Verfuss
- Music Editor: Terry Wilson
- Transportation Coordinator: David Halliday
- Picture Car Coordinator: Iain McGreer
- Script Supervisor: Lorna Bennet
- Location Manager: Robert Bentley
- VFX Artist: Dhas Karthick
- First Assistant Sound Editor: David Stanke
- Production Accountant: Avi Levy
- Animation: Andrew Malesky
- Visual Effects Producer: Julie D’Antoni
- Visual Effects Editor: Darren Griffiths
- Supervising Sound Editor: Kelly Oxford
- ADR Mixer: Beauxregard Neylon
- Animation: Chad Shattuck
- Visual Effects Coordinator: Celine Chew
- Production Coordinator: Simon Rhodes
- Visual Effects Coordinator: Ankit Gokani
- Digital Conform Editor: Robert Zalkind
- Assistant Costume Designer: Alison Fraser
- Matchmove Supervisor: Kevin Lin
- Visual Effects Production Assistant: Ryan Andersen
- Compositing Supervisor: Harimander Singh Khalsa
- Associate Producer: Katie Shapiro
- First Assistant Director: Charlie Watson
- ADR Voice Casting: Johnny Gidcomb
- VFX Artist: Anthony Fung
- Assistant Editor: Blair Miller
- Second Assistant Director: Mark Bunting
- Electrician: Ashraf Benjamin
- Visual Effects Producer: David Robinson
- Lighting Technician: Jason Weir
- First Assistant Director: Jim Brebner
- Boom Operator: Jacques Pienaar
- Best Boy Grip: Dan Sigobongo
- Line Producer: Greig Buckle
- Digital Imaging Technician: Jacques van Tonder
- Prosthetics: Mathew Howard-Tripp
- 3D Artist: Louis Leung
- Music: Youssef Guezoum
- Senior Modeller: Mayuresh Salunke
- 2D Supervisor: Brian Tatosky
- ADR Recordist: Julio Carmona
- Data Wrangler: Jonathan Kyle
- Animation: Derek Tannehill
- Foley Mixer: Brett Voss
- Key Grip: Keith Johnston
- Extras Casting Coordinator: J.P. van der Merwe
- Second Second Assistant Director: De Villiers Fourie
- Matte Painter: Brandon Kachel
- 3D Artist: Craig Van Den Biggelaar
- Art Department Assistant: Shakeela Kingzley
- Second Assistant Director: Sarah MacFarlane
- Chaperone: Chris Ward
- Seamstress: Miriam Williams
- Best Boy Grip: Craig Hattingh
- Libra Head Technician: Brad Maloney
- Matte Painter: Steve Matson
- VFX Artist: Swain Shiv
- Second Assistant “A” Camera: Amy Yeats
- Matte Painter: Mikael Genachte-Le Bail
- Visual Effects Producer: Thilak
- Visual Effects Coordinator: Amira Quinlan
- Visual Effects Coordinator: Hannah Slezacek
- Makeup & Hair: Talia Barak
- Cableman: Damian Fermor
- Prosthetic Supervisor: Rob Carlisle
- Compositing Supervisor: Tom Archer
- Colorist: Craig Eric Parker
- Translator: Bárbara Morelos-Zaragoza
- Visual Effects Coordinator: Denise Tam
- Production Accountant: Joanne Goldstone
- Visual Effects Technical Director: John Riddle
- Makeup Artist: Zania Gerber
- Makeup Artist: Belinda Manwaring
- Makeup Artist: Gloria Wessels
- Construction Manager: Rae Wynne-Roberts
- Graphic Designer: Sonia Staven
- Set Dresser: Craig Griffin
- Set Dresser: Sonnel Grobbelaar
- Set Dressing Buyer: Nicci Lubbe
- Data Wrangler: Andrew Little
- Digital Imaging Technician: Dean Slotar
- Gaffer: J.P. Hankins
- Generator Operator: Nouel Lewis
- Second Assistant “B” Camera: Diogo Domingues
- Video Assist Operator: Pierre Henri De Villiers
- Seamstress: Shahida Dramat
- Chaperone: James Baillie
- Chaperone: Michael Cerff
- Chaperone: Chezlin Cross
- Dialogue Coach: Rachel Wood
- First Assistant Accountant: Marilyn Lindsay
- Production Assistant: Tarique Fredericks
- Production Coordinator: Sonya Ballas
- Production Coordinator: Kat Rogers
- Production Secretary: René Foster
- Set Production Assistant: Bianca Boshoff
- 3D Artist: Paul Hegg
- 3D Artist: Jamie Macdougall
- 3D Modeller: Jocelyn Cervenka
- 3D Modeller: Kenny Roy
- 3D Modeller: Mitch Gonzalez
- Animation: Maxim Klochkov
- Animation: Anna Pozdeyeva
- Animation: Margarita Sheshukova
- Animation: Natalia Sorokina
- Animation: Adam Lawson
- Visual Effects Art Director: Alexey Kalinchikov
- Visual Effects Art Director: Stas Lebedev
- CG Supervisor: Pavel Bezborodov
- Matte Painter: Kenneth Nakada Mikael Genachte-Lebail
- Sequence Supervisor: Daniel Mejia
- VFX Artist: Derek Cheung
- Visual Effects Technical Director: Alexandr Petrov
- Visual Effects Technical Director: Eugeny Urusov
- Visual Effects Technical Director: Andrey Ustyugov
Movie Reviews:
- LastCaress1972: Awkward loner Andrew (Dane DeHaan, soon to appear as Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) is invited by his more affable cousin Matt (Alex Russell, Bait, Carrie) to go to a party, to help cheer him up. Andrew has problems at home; his mother is dying of cancer, the cost of her medication has become prohibitive, and his dad is an abusive drunk. Andrew brings with him the bulky old video camera he’s been using of late to document… I dunno, the misery of his life I suppose. Anyway, once at the party Matt, mildly embarrassed by his cousin following him around with a camera, peels off away from Andrew to hang with some of the cooler kids, including the impossibly popular but genuinely decent Steve (Michael B. Jordan, The Wire, Friday Night Lights). The camera causes further problems for Andrew and he’s unceremoniously ejected from the party. He’s found outside by the aforementioned Steve, and invited to come with him and Matt to check out a weird hole in the ground in the woods nearby (elements of the party had spilled outside into the darkness, as these things do from time to time). Andrew, Matt and Steve venture down this hole, which turns out to be more of a tunnel, leading to… what is that? A space rock of some sort? Something mineral, and glowing, and a bit scary. Upon exiting the hole, the trio find that they possess mild levels of telekinesis, the ability to move objects with their minds. They also find that with practice, they can strengthen that ability. They soon graduate from levitating Lego bricks to flying through the air. Andrew proves to be particularly adept with this new “talent”, and that proves to be problematic, because where Matt and Steve are content to limit their telekinetic use to mild pranks and perhaps flying somewhere interesting on holiday, Andrew’s home life, general isolation and subsequent mood swings as a result of each cause him to want to embrace his power – and for him, it’s grown into a potentially deadly power, now – in altogether different ways indeed.
With Chronicle, writer Max Landis (son of John “An American Werewolf in London” Landis) and director Josh Trank have taken some fairly tired areas (cinéma vérité, superhero origin tales) and made something decent and fresh with them, for comparatively little money (budget was $12m apparently, looks like five times that). It’s not a perfect film – the first-person narrative’s need to justify its camera angles leads to one or two bum notes despite the fairly ingenious device of having Andrew telekinetically “float” the camera around behind him; some of Andrew’s worst rages during the second act – including one with devastating consequences – seem badly disproportionate to the infraction, disconnecting us from the character (though perhaps that’s the idea); and the abusive father (Michael Kelly, Dawn of the Dead, Did You Hear About the Morgans?) seems unrealistically so. But these are things I thought about after having seen the movie. The movie’s tone and pace, and the performances of the three newly-empowered young men particularly, carry the movie very well right to the brisk 78th minute end (minus the credits).
Recommended.
- Per Gunnar Jonsson: Why this movie seem to get a lot of 7 and above ratings is beyond me. It’s certainly not my cup of tea. The three high school friends are behaving annoyingly stupid, reckless and irresponsibly. Only one of them is showing any sign of intelligence. One of them is just silly and the other one is a nutcase. Of course the film actually revolves around the nutcase.
It starts of kind of okay with the three friends finding this glowing alien thing which gives them superpowers and there are some mildly funny scenes when they experiment with them. After that it spirals out of control when the nutcase goes more and more insane.
I can live with the drama and bizarre behaviours if the movie would have had some other redeeming factors such as imagery or acting but none of it is present here. Rather the inverse since the film shot in this wobbling-about handycam/documentary style which I really do not like.
I’m afraid that I found this movie not very entertaining.
- Kamurai: Great watch, will watch again, and can recommend.
I am partial to found footage style of shooting, so I understand if that’s not for you.
Dane DeHaan does a lot of the heavy lifting in this movie, but Michael B. Jordan is right behind him, alongside Alex Russell. It is almost literally just these 3 guys filming each other as they gain, experiment, and grow their supernatural abilities. There are some supporting cast, but they’re more there as plot devices, and another camera angle. Found footage is not easy to do, which is why everyone complains about it.
This is a very natural feeling movie with some dark aspects too it. I really think you can feel when the mood changes in this movie. It also brings up some great points on the “reality” of if people gained super powers.
While most people would claim to be Captain America, the reality is that people tend to do whatever they can get away with, so creating a checks and balances with one’s co-supernaturals makes sense, but the reality is enforcing that turns it into super “hero” versus super “villain”.
Surprisingly, this movie reminds a little bit of “Hancock”, but probably not quite as good, mostly just different.
If you like dark, edgy super power stuff or found footage, give it a go.