Chronicle, the new movie directed by Josh Trank, is a clever almagam of Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Stephen King’s Carrie. It could have used the self-conscious, wincingly hip approach of the latest Marvel comics movies, but it chooses story and depth instead.
The movie begins with Andrew, a horribly awkward high school boy. His dad is an unemployed drunk and his mother is dying of what looks like Cystic Fibrosis. Andrew has no support; he is a statistical accident waiting to happen. Andrew buys an old shoulder-mounted camera to put a wall between him and the world he observes. Through his camera, we see Andrew’s handsome and brainy cousin Matt, his school, the bullies who make his life miserable, and the drug dealers who loiter outside Andrew’s house.
One night, when Andrew takes his camera to a rave, he meets Steve, an athlete and budding politician, who persuades Andrew to take the camera down a strange cavern he and Matt have discovered in the woods. There’s something strange in there: a crystalline entity, device, or spaceship, that irradiates the three young men. Strange otherworldly sounds emanate from it; the boys touch it, wonder at it. The camera begins to malfunction.
When Andrew gets a new camera and begins recording again, the three boys, now fast friends, have developed nascent telekinetic powers. At first, they play dumb jokes: they remove gum from unwitting stranger ’s mouths, chase little girls with animated teddy bears, pull up girls’ skirts. Steve makes the obvious mental leap: If you can manipulate physical objects, why not your own body? In a breathtaking sequence reminiscent of Richard Donnner’s Superman, the three friends take to the sky. But it’s not an ethereal sequence: up above the clouds, the wind howls and they have to wear their hoods pulled tight around their faces. They fly fast as planes and pass and shoot a football back and forth, screaming in joy.
For a little while, all is perfect and ideal. The three friends plan trips to Mali and Tibet, make touchingly earnest plans to improve Andrew’s social status and get him laid, and have the time of their lives.
But nothing is ever perfect. Wherever power and beauty go, chaos and anger follow. As the powers of the three boys are representative of young, impulsive maleness in the bloom of puberty, Andrew’s dark side, his previous lack of friends and his father’s inability to provide, his sexual insecurity, his fear of never being special, explodes and his own power, far greater than his two friends, becomes a threat.
I won’t reveal what happens next, although I’m sure you know. But no plot device is ever utilized cheaply: All characters, no matter what they do, are sympathetic and understandable. We are taught that power used only to destroy and hurt makes the user more lonely and sad than before. Like King’s Carrie, we see power mixed with angry youth, and like Moore’s Miracleman, we see a hero faced with destroying an angry young boy so the world might be saved. Chronicle goes from the Facebook digital age straight into breathtaking comic drama of the best kind, for comics satisfy our need for myth and the impossible.