Weak acting makes ‘Chronicle’ an amateur super-hero movie

The main characters in “Chronicle” are high school students (Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan) who gain telekinetic abilities after an encounter with a strange object they found buried in the ground.

Directed by Josh Trank, the movie unfolds in the over-used “found footage” style popularized by “The Blair Witch Project.” Everything we see was supposedly filmed by the boys themselves, as they learned to strengthen (and then misuse) their powers. In order to convincingly pull off this method, a film needs superior actors who can look perfectly natural, even when awkwardly talking right into the camera. These young actors can’t make it work.

DeHaan is intense as the tortured soul Andrew, but his shift from bullied boy to powerful rebel-villain is so abrupt and over-the-top that it feels forced.

The relatively low-budget levitation and flying effects sometimes feel cheap, and often don’t look as amazing to the audience as they do to the effusive characters. While it begins with a creative concept, “Chronicle” becomes a mess by the end, devolving into a tangle of rehashed moments from other, better science-fiction action films like “X-Men.”