There's something wrong with Andrew.

Chronicle

(2012)

There's more spectacle, excitement and awe in this everyman superhero movie than a summer's worth of mega-bucks action blockbusters. It's quite dazzling what Josh Trank achieves on a (fairly) low budget by mainstream standards. It's not surprising he's been drafted by Fox to help reboot Fantastic Four, as he expresses the giddy highs of being granted super powers better than any movie of the genre so far bar none.

If there's a fault it's that once the darkness begins to overwhelm it, at about the halfway point, it begins to follow a more standard path to a showdown conclusion. As others have commented, there's enough inventiveness with the found footage premise that it doesn't feel intrusive after a certain point (as the camera is functioning more like it would in a standard movie) although I'm still not a fan of the sub-genre.

The performances of the main trio are top notch. Not having seen the Friday Night Lights TV series, I hadn't realised The Wire's Michael B Jordan had grown up to be such a charismatic presence (but it is 10 years since he played Wallace!) And Dane DeHaan does indeed have the air of a young DiCaprio about him. I can only put the SFX in this looking so good (in comparison to a film with 3 or 4 times the budget) down to Trank's eye, and understanding what will work and where. There are moments, such as the fate of a spider, where it's abundantly clear that this guy is employing effects to tell a story not dictate it.

****1/2

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We live in a twilight world.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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