Movie Curiosities: Chronicle
Last month, there was a movie called The Devil Inside. I decided to avoid that release, but not just because of its godawful reviews. I avoided the film because I knew exactly what was going to happen based purely on the trailer. The film opens with a title card implying that the footage shown is real, we're introduced to our annoying cast of characters, freaky paranormal shit happens, the whole thing is captured on an impossibly durable yet incoherently shaky camera, everybody dies, the menace remains entirely mysterious and ready to kill again, cut to black, add a title card saying that no one was ever found, The End.
I could've told you all of this without seeing the film or reading any spoilers online. You know why? Because I've already seen that movie over and over and over and over and over again.
In all of cinema history, I don't think there's ever been a sub-genre that grew more stale more quickly than the "found footage" mockumentary. I'll grant that Apollo 18 took place on the moon, Troll Hunter was a microbudget foreign film, and Cloverfield revolutionized the use of viral marketing and secrecy in promotion. But when you get right down to it, these superficial differences are all for naught because they all follow the exact same goddamn plot. Every single one of them follows the story beats and points that I just listed, down to a T.
[NOTE: I'm not counting Catfish. That isn't really a "found footage" film, since the characters didn't leave their footage behind to be found. They set out to make a documentary about online relationships and that's exactly what they did. The fictional characters successfully made their movie, and it was the mockumentary screened in theaters.]
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