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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Chronicle

Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” However, young people growing up today with high-quality cameras and social media platforms in their pockets have taken this to a level that Socrates couldn’t have imagined. Combine this with the popularity and pervasiveness of reality TV stars who are celebrated for merely existing, and it seems that the sentiment now is that the undocumented life never happened.

The new film ‘Chronicle’ opens with a teenager named Andrew (played by Dane DeHaan), deciding to use a new video camera to record the events of his life as he shuttles between a home life with a violent, alcoholic dad and a sick mom to a high school where he has no friends and bullies wait to torment him. Creative but shy, Andrew seems to feel what many lonely teenagers feel, that if no one likes him enough to examine his life, he’ll simply examine it himself to prove he existed.

But what makes ‘Chronicle’ a satisfying piece of overachieving entertainment is that what Andrew captures is himself, his cousin Matt (played by Alex Russell), and a popular student named Steve (played by Michael B. Jordan), as they experiment with and develop telekinetic powers they obtain after an encounter with a mysterious object.

While this sounds like it could be a superhero origin story, and a pretty promising one, there is no quest or drive for the boys to use their powers for good, nor is there a villain. Filmed and edited in the “found footage” style popularized by ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Chronicle’ follows the boys as they play with and explore their new abilities like the teenagers they are, using them to pull pranks that evoke the style and spirit of MTV’s ‘Jackass’ show, and in Andrew’s case, to try to get a bit of the popularity spotlight turned on him.

But instead of picking out a costume and becoming a superhero, we watch as Andrew retreats from Matt and Steve as his problems at school and home get worse, with his camera — an extension of himself, his feelings of self importance, and his desire to be appreciated — as his only friend. As Andrew’s isolation and resentment intensify, his recordings take on the eerie echoes of the journals and videos left behind by school shooters, which I imagine is not a coincidence.

At one point, Andrew explains his belief that his new powers have made him an “apex predator”, the term used for animals at the very top of the food chain. This is possibly a reference to the now discredited “superpredator” theory, a fearmongering concept born in the mid 90s that claimed that society was encountering a new breed of “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters” known as superpredators. This theory was sometimes cited as a reason to try juveniles as adults, as well as other draconian legislation that favored punishment over prevention. While the superpredator theory was eventually debunked and even disavowed by one of its main authors, it’s sometimes still used to explain the mindset of school shooters like those who committed the Columbine massacre, instead of focusing on preventable factors that can lead to violent outbursts like bullying, overmedication, and lack of support systems.

In that sense, as well as impressive special effects, ‘Chronicle’ succeeds in keeping its story firmly planted in the real world despite its science-fiction premise. Where an outcast doesn’t use newfound abilities to defend the weak, save the planet, and become a hero, but to simply try to be happy and fit in, not realizing that the wounds of adolescence can be a daunting arch nemesis, even if you can fly.

‘Chronicle’ is rated PG-13.