The problem with any “found footage” film is making the audience accept that there’s a camera in one of the character’s hands, because there’s always going to be a non-zero percentage of the viewers who ask why don’t they put the camera down and run away, because that thirty percent or so are incapable of removing themselves from the fiction presented to them on screen.

Even when you slap them upside the head and remind them they’re watching a film about vengeful demons or giant walking 9/11 metaphors, maybe a cameraphone is the least you can ask of your suspension of disbelief.

Here’s a tip: when your friend turns to you with a smug grin across their face and asks you why someone doesn’t just stop recording, you ask them whether that’s really a film they want to watch. It also works when someone asks why the Doctor doesn’t just go back in time to solve all the problems of the episode; just because it’s the rational thing doesn’t mean it’s the entertaining thing, and if you’re watching Doctor Who for its down-to-earth portrayal of an alien who wanders time and space in a wooden box with his increasingly sexy companions, you’re doing it wrong.

Probably because of people like this, Chronicle opens with a scene that explains why the main character, Andrew (Dane DeHaan), is heaving around a video camera: he’s recording evidence against his abusive father. As off-the-bat handwaves go, it’s incredibly effective, particularly so soon after Judge William Adams was caught beating his disabled daughter on a hidden camera. The conceit gets spun out into its logical extension in its third act, too, but I won’t spoil anything for you. But that development was glorious.

So the main action of Chronicle kicks in when Andrew teams up with his smartass cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), whose popular-kid charisma probably counts as a super power in its own right, to investigate a hole in the ground which leads to an… alien-looking… thing… look, it doesn’t matter. The upshot is that the alien-looking thing gives them telekinetic powers and some form of invulnerability. A large portion of the film is then given over to a training sequence of sorts, in which the three teenagers do the sort of thing super powered teenagers would do: pranks, more pranks, and sexual harassment.

For this all-too-brief sequence, Chronicle is like a super-powered Jackass, or a feature-length version of Freddie Wong‘s Jedi A-Holes series of YouTube videos, and if any producers are listening: I would watch that.

I would watch the hell out of that for ninety minutes. But, fortunately (unfortunately?) the story gets going, and it’s not quite a super hero narrative. The trio learns to control their powers and Andrew, the aforementioned camera-heaver, learns to do some impressive things with the camera – effectively providing the grounds for some interesting, if slightly distracting, directorial work. Also, a spider. Spurred on by his mother’s life lessons and Matt’s earlier philosophical diatribes regarding Jung and Plato (the foreshadowing isn’t exactly subtle), he starts to descend into a dark place. In a bigger-budget super hero movie with bigger-budget concerns and bigger-budget corporate interests, this might be a supervillainous origin story teetering over the precipice of cheese, but DeHaan brings a certain brooding menace that makes the character work, even when Andrew’s behind the camera.

While it all goes a bit weird in the final act, Chronicle manages to be something I least expected: a fresh-feeling super hero film. Less of the screen time goes to the punch-ups, more gets given over to the business of developing super powers and the consequences of that. What’s more, Chronicle‘s nods towards realism are done without the nudge-nudge wink-wink approach of post-Watchmen narratives. Apart from the more obvious touches like “the sky is cold and we should probably wrap up warm,” the characters develop their powers in different ways along the rough lines set out by their personalities, adding a nice, subtle twist to the “personality powers” trope we’ve seen a thousand times since the Fantastic Four came along. It’s probably nothing, but I was impressed with it, at least. But the fact remains it all goes a bit weird in the final act: the slow-burning narrative dissolves into the inevitable smackdown in the last twenty minutes, with the dialogue being reduced to a couple of lines yelled over the noise of explosions. The explosions are awesome, but that’s beside the point.

It doesn’t really matter what I say here at the end. Normally it would be a summary, maybe a starred review and a recommendation, and I do recommend it, but the fact remains that either you’re the type of person who wants to go see Chronicle or not, and you’ve made up your mind by now. But, here, how’s this for a summary: if you’re not entirely sick of the ‘found footage’ pseudo-genre, go see Chronicle. It’s a good film, and this time next year you’ll probably remember it better than you’ll remember The Avengers. If you are, you knew you weren’t going to see it the moment you pressed ‘play’ on the trailer up there, and this review has been the easiest half-a-penny I’ve ever made from those ads at the side of the page.

How did you like Chronicle?