Chronicle

A routine disaster film in which three teenagers acquire super powers

This is a movie about what happens when three teenagers, Andrew, Matt and Steve, gain special powers after encountering a UFO thingamajig. They learn how to levitate using their free will. With this mysterious new gift, they can move themselves and also inanimate objects around by using their minds to will as much. At first they have fun, like playing jokes on girls and shifting a parked car to a new space, but soon it goes out of control.

Chronicle is very concerned about giving a pseudo scientific and philosophical dimension to this subject. Matt (Alex Russell) believes that his ‘telekinetic’ power is like a muscle in his anatomy that grows stronger as it is used more frequently. In an earlier conversation in the film, one audacious intellectual leap connects the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer to the paranormal talent the boys have acquired. In On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer defines physical freedom as the absence of physical obstacles to action. This was a part of his larger argument on the nature of free will, but Matt actually quotes it to suggest that you can do things with your mind once you eliminate the physical obstacles to doing so. 

Schopenhauer would call this extrapolation ‘intellectual dishonesty’, but no matter. Computer generated imagery is as good as philosophy at eliminating  physical obstacles placed by the laws of nature, and so free will allows the boys to fly a mile high, zap people, throw cars off the road and do the kind of things that Superman did to battle the bad boys  who invaded our planet.

At first, the teenagers try to set rules to govern their actions, but one of the three, Andrew (Dane DeHaan), lives in a dysfunctional family and lets out his angst by shifting gear and destroying everything in sight. From an interesting movie idea, Chronicle quickly degenerates into a routine ‘disaster’ film in which the city of Seattle is torn apart by computer graphics.

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Ajit Duara