10 Brilliant Movies With A Terrible Concept

7. Chronicle

Chronicle Dane Dehaan
20th Century Fox

The Concept: In the run-up to the release of Chronicle, the general reaction to it was a sarcastic "Yay! Another found footage movie!"

Even back in 2012, the genre had been done to death - Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project, Quarantine and the numerous Paranormal Activity movies had killed the novelty of the format - so Chronicle, even though it was marketed as a superhero origin story, just seemed like another way to repackage a movie we'd seen a million times before.

The Movie: While Chronicle did contain several issues that have plagued found-footage movies since the beginning (why are they still filming this? Who managed to find all these clips and cut them together?) none of that mattered - its story was gripping, intense and surprising, from start to finish.

Featuring a trifecta of great lead performances, its characters are so engrossing that you'll probably forget you're even watching a found footage movie. Chronicle is utterly focused on the relationships between these three young men, the powers they gain, and the trouble that causes, and that story would be great no matter how it was filmed.

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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!