Chronicle, a dark sci-fi thriller about teenage superheroes, counts as one of the rare instances in which the increasingly prevalent and increasingly maligned technique is deployed, and not merely a cheap gimmick for manufacturing tension.

The story begins with Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a pale lad, switching on a camera and declaring to his drunken father, who fumes outside his bedroom door, that he intends to ‘film everything.’ And so he does. Narrating in a gloomy, nasal tone, he documents the daily indignities of high school, being accosted by bullies and having lunch alone.

Andrew’s circumstances change considerably when his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), the school’s reigning alpha male, chance upon a hole in a forest clearing that leads them deep underground, where they encounter something strange. Soon, the boys begin to manifest powers of telekinesis.

Rather than hunt criminals, the boys do, well, what you would expect impulsive, judgment-impaired teenage boys to do. They play pranks on unsuspecting department-store shoppers, try to one-up each other with increasingly hazardous stunts, absolutely dominate beer pong competitions, and otherwise prove the perils of mating great power with great irresponsibility. 

Of the three, Andrew emerges as the most gifted in the use of his powers and he clearly relishes the newfound confidence they bring. But his less admirable qualities – emotional instability, hypersensitivity, and a troubling amorality – stubbornly remain, and when events turn against him, they lead him down the dark path all-too-conspicuously foreshadowed from the film’s outset.