This week, SuperHeroHype sister site ShockTillYouDrop.com was called to 20th Century Fox and treated to a series of clips from the upcoming film, hosted by Trank and Fox creative exec Steve Asbell.
Chronicle tells of three high school students (actors Alex Russell, Dane DeHaan and Michael B. Jordan) who, one evening, discover a hole in the earth. Exposure to whatever it is that made said hole (those details are not being given yet) grants them extraordinary telekinetic powers that get stronger as they use them. As the story goes on, the misfit of the group, Andrew (DeHaan), apparently taps into his dark side and things take a sour turn.
As one scene showed, Andrew robs a gas station, knocking out the attendant – without throwing a fist – and extracts all of the cash register’s money – without using his hands. And because Chronicle uses the “found footage” narrative technique, you have to ask: Who is filming Andrew rob this gas station? The answer is simple, he is…by using his telekinetic abilities to hold the camera aloft and follow him around.
This clever little detail is just one of the many things about the Chronicle presentation that impressed Shock. The scope was surprising. The clips shown were a smattering of story points from the first, second and thirds acts and by the time they were given a glimpse at the finale, it was full of crashing helicopters, cars soaring into the air and a hair-raising perspective from the top of Seattle, Washington’s Space Needle. That’s a far cry from some of the earlier scenes Shock saw which found the main characters using their abilities to use a leaf blower to lift up skirts, jab forks at one another and even fly.
