The found footage subgenre really has a hard time making a big deal of itself, and, as the kids say, it deserves the shade. Calling it a gimmick is a less worthwhile criticism than calling it a poor gimmick, but the point stands: very few films have managed to develop an altogether convincing reason for the technique, and as of 2015, it has been a good eight years since the last great work in the subgenre (REC). You see, it becomes a gimmick not by its existence but by becoming a crutch rather than an artistic tool, and in Chronicle, it serves as both. The problem, specifically, is that the hand-held camera is only particularly useful in the early portions of the film, and the texture of the technique contrasts somewhat wildly with the film’s eventual climax and conclusion, and that is a somewhat unavoidable pratfall and a pit the film never manages to claw its way out of. Continue reading →