What if you suddenly had the power to do anything?

Chronicle opens today with an eye on putting the superhero genre into the forefront of the “found footage” trend. What they do find is a compelling mix of fun and characterization that never quite soars to the heights for which it seemed to be aiming.

Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is a troubled teen living in Seattle with an abusive father (Michael Kelly) and dying mother (Bo Petersen) who decides to start documenting his life with a cheap video camera. His only friend appears to be his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) an occasional student who enjoys espousing philosophy.

One night, Matt convinces Andrew to go to a rave with him. As the party winds down Matt and his friend Steve (Michael B. Jordan) take Andrew to document a weird glowing hole they found. They venture into the hole and find what appears to be an alien rock that shuts off the camera.

The movie resumes with the three boys suddenly blessed with telekinetic abilities. They can move objects with their minds, create force fields around their bodies, and, eventually, fly.

At first, the three use these powers for harmless fun. They play pranks at a local store, perform magic at a talent show, and generally just mess around. Andrew’s dark tendencies, however, begin to lead the others to realize that there’s something more to these powers and something bad could happen if they’re not careful.

It’s at this point that the film really had a chance to be an all-world, 10/10 story. The first third of the movie does such a careful and smart job of creating a rift between these characters that it seemed poised to become an enduring character study about what causes some to become good and others to become evil against the backdrop of supervillains versus superheroes.

The characters are so rich and their paths so well-defined that it almost seemed impossible for the film to mess up what appeared to be the structure for a very deeply analytical and thematic story told with great fun.

Instead, the film just aims for the fun. At the point where it could turn very dark, turn deeply analytical, it instead remains flat, exploring more of the jokes and gimmicks the kids play with their powers instead of how the common powers actually divide them.

It’s a mainstream tack to take, but one that undermines what could have been a very interesting film. Essentially, the film retreads what we’ve seen for the first half-hour in its second third to the point that the characters don’t really have anywhere to go but sideways for a good portion of the movie.

This is frustrating, because the film does such an elegant job of creating a rift between the characters very early in the movie and seems afraid to really delve into the ideas behind what it’s done and what it’s established.

Despite its aggravating path, the film does work on just about every other level. Its three leads are very compelling, giving solid naturalistic performances aided by the found footage format. They have an excellent chemistry and following them through the development of their powers is a lot of fun to watch. Especially as they get stronger.

This is a fun ride, not a deep ride, but a fun one and the characters are so well-realized that it’s easy to ignore the missed opportunity and just focus on their journey. As shallow as that journey ends up being.

The only other complaint is with the format. The found footage aspect of the film adds a bit of fun, but at times it becomes too distracting and even gimmicky. There are also parts where it makes no sense that the characters would film themselves, and that adds an unnecessary level of confusion to the proceedings. And a level that never existed as the story and characters are good enough that it didn’t need to rely on a wonky format for the film to make an impact.

Despite these quibbles, Chronicle remains a very good movie that comes up just short of being great. Its good far outweighs its bad, and really the only problem with it is that it had a ton of potential and only ended up living up to about 80% of it. Like a high draft pick who becomes a solid starter in the league for several years.

Maybe if it’d had a few more super powers.