Movie Reviewed: Chronicle

I should start off by saying i had fairly low expectations for this movie and was pleasantly surprised. Now, this is a recovered-footage movie. Unlike the vast majority of the recovered-footage genre, which sucks (cough cough, apollo 18. cough cough, blaire witch, cough cough, you get the idea) this was really good. So, we start out with Andrew, a sad-sack high school senior in the suburbs of Seattle whose only real friend is his cousin Matt. His dad's an unemployed, abusive drunk living on a firefighter's pension and his mom is dying of an unspecified disease that leaves her bed-ridden. For no discernable reason, he starts to videotape everything he does just for the sake of having something to do. Matt talks him into going to a rave out in the woods, where he gets humiliated. And then mr. popular, Steve, says he and Matt are checking out this giant hole in the ground and they want him to record it. They go down into the cave, much to Andrew's dismay, and find this big-ass glowing rock. The shot ends. Next thing you know, Andrew's got a new camera and he, Matt, and Steve have telekinetic powers. They have fun with it for a little while, and we see a sort of feel-good story for the next... I wanna say half hour to forty five minutes. And then Andrew's life goes to hell. He gets dangerous and unstable, which actually isn't terribly unreasonable given the state he's in. The climax involves him using his powers for evil. I'd say more but I don't wanna ruin the movie. I found this movie to be immensly entertaining, full of action, some hysterical comedy, and an engaging, albeit somewhat unfocused, plot. The acting here was really good, especially seeing how it was a bunch of early twenty somethings i've never heard of, and the characters felt like real people who you could relate to a little bit. The way the movie portrayed high school students was somewhat disturbingly accurate. It didn't always seem plausible that they'd be recording some of what they did, but that was made up for by the great commentary and camera angles, plus all the other amazing scenes. Most of the special effects were pretty good as well, though it's clear this movie was operating on a relatively low budget. Overall, I'm gonna call this a very good, very well done movie, probably the best one that's gonna come out until late april at the earliest. Final Rating: 90%