10 Amazing Movies Under 90 Minutes Long

4. Chronicle

Chronicle Dane Dehaan
20th Century Fox

Runtime: 83 minutes

The found-footage format was very much a gimmick by the time Chronicle released in 2012, and it was hard to get excited about the film for this reason alone.

And yet, the movie felt utterly innovative, splicing a superhero origin story with a teen drama and peppering it with a grounded, gritty feel evoked by the shaky-cam that was used to film the entire thing.

It really is amazing that Chronicle is as short as it is. It has three lead characters (one of whom transitions from likeable outsider to all-powerful supervillain), it has to bring them all together in a believable fashion, it has to make their friendship work and then it has to tear them apart.

There's a lot going on here, and it's testament to the power of Josh Trank's direction (and the superb performances of his three leads) that so much of this meaning is conveyed through body movements, tics and facial expressions; there isn't a single second that feels wasted.

Oh, and that high-flying finale is one of the most gut-wrenching final confrontations the superhero genre has ever offered.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!