Chronicle arrived in February 2012 with a found-footage gimmick and a question for a tagline: “What are you capable of?” Josh Trank, making his feature-length directorial debut, and writer Max Landis answer that question in 84 minutes, and the answer is not flattering. Three Seattle high school seniors find something glowing in a hole in the woods, gain telekinetic powers, and discover that the worst thing about unlimited ability is the person holding it.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.
Andrew Detmer Buys a Camera
Dane DeHaan plays Andrew, a teenager with a full plate of misery. He is bullied at school. His father Richard, played by Michael Kelly, is an alcoholic who abuses him. His mother Karen, played by Bo Petersen, has cancer, and the family is drowning in medical debt after Richard loses his firefighter job.
Andrew’s only friend is his cousin Matt Garetty, played by Alex Russell. Inspired by Matt’s girlfriend Casey, played by Ashley Hinshaw, Andrew buys a camera to keep a video diary. That camera is the movie’s whole visual scheme, and it is the reason Chronicle works as well as it does.
The Hole in the Woods
Popular student Steve Montgomery, played by Michael B. Jordan, asks Andrew to film a large hole he and Matt found in the woods. The three climb down and find a glowing crystalline object. It reacts violently, and the camera shorts out.
A few days later, all three have telekinetic abilities. Authorities close the hole, so there is no going back for seconds. The trio use their powers for pranks, and the pranks are the best stretch of the film — loose, funny, and specific about how teenage boys would actually behave with a superpower.
Andrew Pushes a Motorist Into a Lake
The turn comes when Andrew pushes a rude motorist into a lake. Matt suggests restraint, and the others agree. Then Steve discovers the trio can fly, and they agree to travel the world together after graduation, with Andrew especially eager to visit Tibet.
Steve talks Andrew into a magic act at the school talent show, which lands. Andrew enjoys his new popularity at a house party until he drunkenly vomits on a classmate he intended to have sex with, and Steve accidentally offends him trying to lighten the mood.
Richard Detmer Finds the Camera
Richard finds Andrew’s hidden camera and confronts him, convinced Andrew has squandered money meant for school and for Karen’s medical treatments. The fight escalates until Andrew loses control and uses his powers against his father. He flees the house.
That sequence is where Chronicle stops being a lark. Trank stages the violence with the same handheld intimacy he used for the pranks, and the shift in register is the point.
| Element | Chronicle |
|---|---|
| Director | Josh Trank (feature-length debut) |
| Writer | Max Landis |
| Runtime | 84 minutes |
| Budget | $12–15 million |
| Gross | $127 million |
| Premiere | Gérardmer Film Festival, January 28, 2012 |
| US release | February 3, 2012, by 20th Century Fox |
What $12 Million Buys
The budget line is the most interesting number here. Chronicle grossed $127 million against a reported $12–15 million budget, and you can see where the money went and where it did not.
There are no costumes, no alien armadas, no third-act city flattened by a studio’s visual effects budget. The powers are mostly people staring hard at things and things moving. The found-footage frame covers for the cheap stuff and gives the film a nervous, immediate texture.
It also traps the movie. Every scene has to be justified by a camera that someone is holding, and Chronicle stretches that rule until it snaps. By the finale, the film is cutting between sources that no character could plausibly be operating, and the gimmick becomes a liability instead of an asset.
The Cast Carries It
DeHaan is the reason the film holds together. Andrew is written as a collection of grievances, and DeHaan makes the grievances feel like they belong to a person rather than a screenwriting checklist. His quiet scenes with Petersen’s Karen are the film’s best argument for itself.
Jordan is charming and underused. Russell is the conscience, which is the least interesting job in the script. Kelly gets one good confrontation and makes it count.
The 39th Saturn Awards nominated Chronicle for Best Science Fiction Film. That is a fair category for it. It is a science fiction film that is really a character study, and the science fiction is mostly a delivery mechanism.
Verdict
Chronicle is a smart, mean little movie that knows exactly what it is doing for about an hour and then loses its nerve and its logic at the same time. The found-footage conceit is a genuine formal choice, not a gimmick pasted on, and Trank gets real mileage from it before the seams show.
What matters most is the arithmetic. A first-time director and a first-time feature writer turned a $12–15 million budget into $127 million, and they did it without a star or a franchise. That is the part worth watching. The film’s real legacy is not the telekinesis — it is the proof that a small, mean, well-observed genre picture could still find an audience.
What does not hold up is the third act, where the movie abandons its own rules to get to a climax it has not earned. Andrew’s descent is sketched, not built, and the final confrontation plays as obligation rather than inevitability. The tagline asked what you are capable of. Chronicle is more convincing about what a teenager will do with power than about what the movie will do with its own premise.
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