One A Day #1: Chronicles Of the Mind

So begins my first attempt at putting out one movie review a day. No review of  The Vow just yet, but I was able to download and watch Chronicle the day before it was supposed to release on DVD, so as promised, here is the first dose of Just the Ticket's One A Day:

Thanks to directors like Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity, the boring first season of The River, and the Coming Distraction, Chernobyl Diaries) and J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield), so-called "found footage" cinema--initially made popular with last century's underwhelming cult classic, The Blair Witch Project--is on the rise lately. Such films and TV shows, although they for some reason become hits, suffer from annoying hand-held videography, use of amateurish cliches like night vision and infrared, and the limited scope that comes with having only one surveiled location and/or one cameraman.

Chronicle is yet another in the rising tide of faux-cumentaries, but director Josh Trank (Spike TV's The Kill Point) looks to have learned from the mistakes of his predecessors. The narrator/documentarian (Dane DeHaan, with help from cinematographer Matthew Jensen) handles his camera like a professional, there are no color scheme gimmicks to be seen, and the characters' "powers" are put to creative use, allowing DeHaan's slowly deteriorating Andrew to come into view for the latter part of the production.

It plays like a documentary-style origin story for your average crybaby supervillain: Andrew Detmer, a high school outcast for the lens he puts between himself and the rest of the world, abused by his alcoholic father, gains telekinetic powers from a mysterious rock he and his two friends (Michael B. Jordan and Alex Russel) find in a cave. What starts out with the trio learning to use their new abilities via a series of harmless pranks escalates into murder and epic violence as his inferiority complex and hostile home life cause Andrew's psyche to fracture as he lashes out at his friends and the world at large.

The trio's digital effects-aided powers (telekinesis, flight, super-strength, dense skin, and telepathy) are extremely well-executed (yes, even the flight, which looked like someone ran a fishhook into the actors' undies and hoisted them into the air, was well done because the characters weren't supposed to be smooth fliers), and the young actors' dramatic performances (especially DeHaan's and Russel's) amid the action and visual trickery of the film's final scene were impressive for a cast of unknowns.

A superhero film for people who don't like superhero films.

A-

Tomorrow's One A Day selection will be the long-awaited review of The Vow, which I will watch later today. Until then, wait smart and stay tuned for the next dose of One A Day.