MOVIE REVIEW - Chronicle

A couple of movie trends continue with the new Chronicle this week. The trend of movies made for a young audience, namely young guys. Also, the trend of hand held herky-jerky filming, point of reference like Paranormal Activity. And the trend of supposedly scary movies.

Chronicle is the fictional story of three high school friends who at a party somehow make contact with something extra-terrestrial. The three boys are then given the "gift" of telekinesis. The remarkable ability to move things with the power of the mind. At first, it's all fun and games, as the boys use the powers to pull pranks, and do amazing things that are considered cool by their friends.

The three can even develop the ability to fly. And as time goes on, the powers become more powerful and using them has greater ramifications. Then it all starts to go wrong. One of the boys decides to use his powers to cause harm, and go to the dark side if you will. He is the strongest one, and in the end can cause the most damage to himself, and the greater Seattle area where the boys live.

OK, you guessed it. This is movie laden with special effects, and loud noises. It also caters to a young audience that I'm sure think that having these powers would be "epic". And to be fair, it might be epic to have this gift. But, Chronicle gets fatiguing very quickly, even in its tidy 85 minutes, both in story and in technique. I'm not going to rip this in half, but to be honest I was glad when this was over.

This is a great example of a movie that overused this herky-jerky style. This would have been better if it would have been filmed in the more traditional style. The movie was limited by the hand held camera, and didn't make it better, just more trendy. The story was better than this. There is too much action for the hand held technique to be effective.

But maybe the biggest offense of this is, it's not scary. Not at all. There were a few jolting moments that really didn't work. And the climactic scenes at the movies end are too busy, and too blurry to feel fear. In short, many things it was supposed to be... it is not.

Chronicle. Average at best. Even for the core audience.