Hello, found footage film. Still trying to maintain your alliterative stylistic artifice in light of your considerable conceptual drawbacks and inherent flaws, I see.

Yes, it’s back. The method so often leapt upon as the clever alternative way to craft and present a story to the movie-going masses – Found Footage. I have mentioned in previous reviews (here and here) the nature of the found footage picture, whereby the entire film is a narrative shot by the characters themselves and presented onscreen as a recorded, ideally unedited (in the conventional sense) journal of events as they unfold. It is a very difficult method to get right. So much so that I’m not sure there has been a single instance where it has been completely free from problems. The closest ones I would say that have come to doing it right are probably The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but even they have their issues.

The problems with this particular style are rather numerous, and ultimately present a much narrower capacity for high excitement and drama (in a traditional sense) because it locks the perspective to a single character. In the end, the question always comes down to this: who’s putting this all together? Within the film’s reality (which is, of course, purported to be our reality), what are the circumstances that led to the film finding its way to us, the audience? Now, there tends to be a bit of preamble before the film itself begins, explaining just how what you are about to watch was found, and how it has been presented. This can take the form of a simple paragraph of text (like in, say, The Blair Witch Project or Apollo 18), whereas others may opt to give an actual introduction (such as the television producer’s intro in Grave Encounters).

Regardless of the set-up, strictly speaking, the way it should run is that the subsequent film plays itself out as if you yourself have literally just found a mystery videotape in the woods or the cave or the basement of an old house, taken it home, put it in your VCR (everyone still has one of those things, right?) and watched it then and there. Barring the introduction message, what follows is the complete end-to-end record of what the tape’s owner filmed before the tape wound up in the woods, cave or basement. It’s voyeurism, it’s eavesdropping, it’s everything illicit and deliciously unsavoury about literally adopting someone else’s perspective as they go about whatever business is being filmed, unaware that someone else, perhaps a complete stranger, is watching it, too.

Given this very obviously seedy side to it all, this style is most often used (at least in mainstream cinema) in the horror genre. It makes sense in horror because it’s the genre that already identifies itself most clearly with the darker, seedier aspects of human nature. The idea of putting the viewer in the place of the victim, or the killer, can have a particular effect on them, be it emotional or moral. For examples of this, look to the shower scene in Psycho or the unsettling sequence of the videotaped assault in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

However, there is an alternative to this. Using the camera as, not just a key to the protagonist’s literal perspective, but as a companion that exists separately from them as well. Well, this week’s Chronicle is one of the few instances that the method has been applied to something other than a horror film, here instead looking at the relationship of three friends who find themselves suddenly imbued with superpowers after making an incredible discovery buried underground in some woods. What begins with simple pranks and jokes with their newfound abilities eventually starts to turn nasty when one of them begins to embrace his darker self, and turning his gift on others.

The film’s director, Josh Trank, has basically taken a particular filmic approach and applied it to a story that exists outside of that style’s normal generic parameters. Part superhero adventure, part human drama, Chronicle tries to present its characters and their world in as low-key a manner as possible, further distancing itself from the other big budget superhero movies we’re all familiar with, and will be seeing much more of as the year goes on.

Okay, I’ve laid down some of the groundwork. The question here is simple: is Chronicle any good? To answer, I’ll break it down into two parts.

First – The Use of the Found Footage Method:
Whilst Chronicle doesn’t make all of the same mistakes that Apollo 18 did in their chosen manner of storytelling, it certainly shares some glaringly bad similarities. What begins with a simple single-camera set-up controlled by any one of our three leads gradually explodes into using pretty much every single camera in any given area, from security cameras to cameras wielded by other characters (oh, you're filming all of this for your blog? How... convenient), right down to the phones being lifted from strangers' pockets. Immediately, this brings into question the point I made earlier: who’s putting all this together? If it remains within a single camera, from beginning to end, there’s no problem because the narrator’s perspective remains constant. No work needs to be done. Sure, it may not be the most visually dynamic thing ever, but it remains the truest telling in the chosen mode of presentation. If there are other cameras being used to intercut throughout, then it points to the efforts of an editor and/or director, and therefore a particular artistic direction, and so the illusion of reality naturally unfolding is instantly compromised. And who’s gathering up all of this footage? The logistics alone would be a nightmare.

Trank had said that, with Chronicle, he wanted make a found footage film that didn’t feel like a found footage film… it’s a nice thought, but it’s also one that is pretty much destined to fail. The point behind this method is to attach the audience to one perspective in the story, putting them in the middle of the action and keeping them there. To suddenly start shifting the perspective from camera to camera, without any internal logic, destroys the stylistic conceit and begs the question why the filmmakers didn’t just go with the more conventional approach, since that’s clearly what they wanted and it would raise no questions about the validity of the scene (such as why the camera was set up in a hospital room and who put it there). That the primary camera (which isn’t even the same camera that we start with because the first one is lost underground… yeah, go back and read that again) is often levitated around our group in order to get all three characters onscreen is, frankly, a bit like trying to have your cake and eat it, too. And almost every single scene that contains even one cut forces you to think about who’s editing all this together, where they’re getting all this footage and what the final outcome is in the end. There are even certain scenes that render themselves stylistically irrelevant by the mere fact that they exist at all (such as the scene in which one boy’s father goes snooping around his son’s room - what, the camera just happens to be hidden, turned on and framed just right for this supposedly clandestine intrusion? Sorry, not buying it). This near constant breaking of the rules just serves to perpetually point out that you’re watching a movie, making it very hard to get into, at least for me. There were very few times throughout Chronicle where I was comfortable with the scene I was watching, and it was pretty much always because I never believed that it was reality unfolding. However, let’s ignore this (in my opinion, fatal) flaw and consider Chronicle as a story of character and morality.

Second – The Overall Story:
Would Chronicle have been a success if they had ignored the found footage concept and adopted a more conventional approach, letting the story stand on its own? Honestly, probably not. Though there are some things to like about the film, it can sometimes come at a price. For example, the characters are fairly defined and recognisable, but that’s largely only because they’re a bit stock. The story itself is paced well and never feels like it’s dragging its feet, though it won’t hold any real surprises, mainly because of the stock nature of the characters, which has the obvious knock-on effect given that it’s basically a character-driven piece.

Ignoring the method of narration, concentrating solely on the character’s arc and interaction, there was one film that Chronicle instantly reminded me of - 2006’s The Covenant. Now, I’ll say right now that Chronicle is nowhere near as bad as that Renny Harlin-directed dreck, since Chronicle does at least have some respect for its characters and audience. However, that it did hit upon some very familiar territory, both in story and character type, was a little off-putting.

Still, giving the film its due, the effects are pretty damn good, the acting is of a good standard throughout, and the big climax at the end is a solidly involving action set-piece. The whole final sequence comes the closest to capturing any stragglers in the audience and taking them on an enjoyable ride to the finish line.

So, asking the question once again: is Chronicle any good? Well, for my money, no. Barring some decent work from the actors and visual effects, and a pretty cool third act, what really separates the film from the crowd of similar types of story is the form of the found footage picture, the rules of which it comes to shatter at nearly every turn. If you can ignore all of that, then you’ll probably have a good time with the film. If you can’t, you’ll struggle to invest in anything you see.