Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Chronicle: perfect villian movie

It was obviously an odd choice of movie to watch on Valentines day. But all the hype around this movie, and the high score reviews had bestowed on it proves to be irresistible. I had high tolerance for found footage movie type of movies so why not? I sat through the grandpa of found footage and enjoy Blair Witch Project, and kind of enjoy Paranormal Activity (least the first one). Chronicle seems to be less harmful.



The story is simple, 3 boys encountered a light emitting object and gain supernatural powers, mainly telekinesis, but as the show progress, the telekinesis further evolved into flying. Boys will be boys; initially experiments with their powers were pranks but things got rather out of hand later. I suspect there are scenes that were edited by our sweet censorship board but unable to determine which part. Anyway, one of the boys faced with the ingredients to break someone, such as abusive father, sick mother with no money for med, social outcast and bullied. In the end, he became the villian and the other need to stop him. In short, it is a superhero film but in contrast to portray the making of a hero, this film chronicles the making of a villian.



The camerawork is not bad, even though it is a found footage genre, because of the telekinesis controlling the camera, the angles of the shots were varied. The acting was good, chemistry was fair.

The novelty of this movie is the approach, and as reviewed by other people, the end battle is something to wait for. It may lack the surreal battle of the recent onslaught of superheroes movies (eg Green Lantern, Captain A, Iron Man, Thor, XMen etc), the among all, the battle do look real enough. The first half may be bit draggy, but it is for the sake of builtup for the final few scenes.



Now, I wonder would anyone would make the movie: Joker Origin....

ratings: 4 poink!
comments: definitely a different way to make a superhero movie. Not perfect, but definitely a good movie.