I had seen the trailers for this film and it peaked a mild interest, but the knowledge that this was yet another found footage film kept me out of the theaters. Staying out of the theaters proved most wise, it is film is crap.

What follows will be a spoiler heavy review of the stinking pile of poo, so don’t follow if you have any care at all about the plot and think you might want to see the movie.

Chronicle, in a  slug-line, is Laserblast with better special effects.

Andrew is a dweedish high school senior, picked upon by bullies, ignored by girls, and abused by his alcoholic father.   Andrew’s life is truly fucked by the fact that his loving parent, his mother, is slowly dying at home. His only friend appears to be his cousin Matt, but even Matt can only take so much of Andrew’s weirdness.

The film starts with Andrew first videotaping with his new camera. For reasons never made clear, Andrew has decided to video tapes everything that happens to him. Of course this is the conceit of the ‘found footage’, but like most found footage the time frame and sheer number of incidents break all sense of credibility for the technique.

Andrew and Matt, along with Steve, a popular student running for class president, find a glowing meteorite in a field and after this exposure the three posses the power of telekinesis.  A new character is introduced, a young lady who films everything that happened to her for her blog. Wow, two teenagers who both are filming their lives and always have their camera pointed in the right direction at the right times, I don’t see why I found this film so hard to accept.

What follows next is a seemingly endless number of pointless scenes of the teenagers learning to use their power. These scenes are noteworthy for their lack of dramatic conflict. They are pure exposition and as such utterly boring.

At Steve’s prompting Andrew enters the school talent contest, performing feats of ‘magic’ and becoming so instantly popular that sexy girl want to sleep with him. Of course this end disastrously when Andrew vomits on the girl and is spurned.

Yeah, Andrew gets angry and bitter, the teasing returned to its former intensity, and Andrew’s acts of retaliation are brutal. (Can you say Carrie boys and girls? I knew you could.)

After suffering abuse at the hands of his father, Andrew flees to the skies where Steve confronts him, they have an extra-magical power of sensing when Andrew is about to execute a plot-point, and tries to find out what going on. Steve’s reward, as it always is for person of color in these movies, is a lightening bolt. (Andrew has taken to levitating he camera, making the whole found footage conceit truly meaningless.)

At the funeral Matt knows something is wrong, but can’t get the truth out of Andrew. Andrew turns to crime to pay for the prescription for his dying mother, is wounded when he accidentally exploded a gas station with a shotgun. (yeah, just let it go, let it go.) he ends up in the hospital, where he father comes and berates the sleeping Andrew for the death of his mother. Andrew snaps and starts a telekinetic rampage. Matt – using that extra-magical power of knowing about Andrew’s plot points – hurries to confront Andrew, dragging his new girlfriend and he ever present camera.

A big battle follows, cool special effects are used, and characters hit each other with buses and general act badly. The whole thing end with Matt killing Andrew with a spear that somehow Andrew is unable to block despite his godlike abilities. Matt then takes off for Tibet to learn –something I don’t know, that the Chinese military are bigger assholes than Andrew, maybe.

This film was cliché ridden and a waste of 84 minutes. It did nothing to change my opinion that the ONLY good found footage film was Colverfield.