I watched the movie Chronicle and wrote my thoughts on it.

Chronicle’s plot

Andrew lives with his ailing mother and his father, who unexpectedly quit his job as a firefighter to take care of her, and his only friend is his cousin Matt. One day, Andrew accompanies Matt to a party, and along the way, he and Steve are drawn into a cave by a strange noise. After touching a strange object that emits a reddish glow, the source of the noise, Andrew and Steve are given the superpower of telekinesis. As Andrew’s powers grow stronger and stronger, from the ability to match Lego pieces to the ability to fly, his air currents become strange. Andrew’s frequent friction with his father and an insulting incident at a party turn him into an increasingly ferocious predator, and Matt tries to stop him, but ultimately Andrew is his own undoing.

Why did the Chronicle movie appeal to me?

What makes this sci-fi movie more appealing to me is its honesty. I don’t usually like hero movies. I don’t usually like hero movies because they don’t come across as honest to me. The bio-men and vector men I watched as a child fought against the hordes of evil, and their victory was to protect the humans and defeat evil by protecting our planet. Humans cheer them on; their strength and abilities protect good humans from evil. When I was younger, I was fascinated by their heroism and cheered them on. But in the world I live in now, there are no heroes. The heroes we talk about don’t become heroes while they’re alive, they become heroes when they’re dead. We say we remember them when they’re dead, but we don’t even remember them properly because we’re weak and powerless. I like that the kids with powers here don’t use them for the sake of others. It seems more honest. There are no absolute “evil” beings in the world. There are only good people with ‘evil’ aspects. People say, “If you put it that way, is there anyone in the world who isn’t good?” Yes, there are many good people, many weak-hearted people, among those we call bad people. There is always goodness in the human heart, like high school students who steal money from bread shuttles and steal tears from love requests. But there is also evil.

The turbulent inner life of the protagonist rather than superpowers

One thing that draws me to Chronicle is the story itself. The telekinesis in the movie is one thing, but it’s not what drives the story, it’s their story, their psychological changes, and the changes in their surroundings that drive the story, and it’s the inner lives of the main characters. In short, it can be seen as a narrative with a social message rather than a hero, which is usually used in science fiction. The story begins with the children’s imagination of things that everyone can imagine, and then it becomes a reality. This is what makes it so appealing. Generally speaking, hero stories are about some human being who is chosen, who somehow gains superpowers and uses them to save others, and then fights against the “evil” that they are supposed to fight. While heroes’ “powers” are often used for the benefit of others rather than themselves, the children in Chronicle take their powers into their own hands. Who yelled at them to touch an object that made a strange noise? They use the abilities they gain out of curiosity, but only for as long as their curiosity lasts. They choose to use their powers for themselves, and they use them only for themselves. The ability to fly, the ability to do things for your own pleasure rather than for others. That’s what intrigued me about this movie. Their behavior of using their powers for their own happiness rather than being heroes for others is much more realistic and honest to us today.

Controlling and losing control

Have you ever been severely controlled by something? In some ways, we are controlled by many things in school and in life. When we live with our parents, their nagging is a small form of control, and when we put up with people no matter how angry we are, it’s a form of control over ourselves. However, suffocating control eventually becomes oppression. For Andrew, being controlled is a terrible situation that makes his white face turn blue. His father’s control goes beyond controlling and escalates into violence, which threatens Andrew. Unfortunately for Andrew, he has no school, no home, and no shelter of his own. His father’s control spirals out of control, and he threatens Andrew with violence. But then an accidental event happens that pushes him out of their control. Andrew has gained powers beyond theirs. Andrew’s unimaginable power to go on a rampage is, in a way, a reflection of the fact that, just as violence begets violence, he has been given the same power, which means that his reasoning for any violence is different from theirs. Since there is no justification for their (his father’s, his friends’) violence so far, there is no justification for Andrew’s violence against others due to his powers. Andrew doesn’t even know that there is a justification, because he has accepted violence without much protest because he is powerless. This is where the conflict between Andrew and Matt comes in. Andrew is more powerful than Matt and Steve because he is in a repressed situation, and his power is an unconscious force that comes from his survival instincts. The more powerful he becomes, the less powerful those who oppress and control him become. The fact that he was silent in the face of violence from his father and schoolmates is also an instinctive reminder that he is not a predator. Having lost his sense of reason and legitimacy, Andrew sees nothing but a shell with the eyes of an animal. His repressed anger has turned him into a beast with power, and he can control anything and everything with his psychic abilities. But he loses control of himself.

Andrew only communicates with the camera

The movie’s visuals are dominated by Andrew’s new camera. From the beginning to the end, his obsession is not with people, but with his new camera, which is always with him and captures his every move. As he watches the footage on his computer, laughing hysterically at his daily routine, the only faces he sees are his mom’s, Matt’s in the car with him, and Andrew’s stiff, frightened face. He wants to record. The camera is the first object he tries to control with his telekinesis, an obsessive behavior. Moving the camera around freely, he captures everything he can. Andrew knows that his ability has not only brought him happiness, but also friends, which is why his face on camera has been filled with laughter ever since he gained his powers. Andrew is a person who wants to share and communicate, whether it’s with a camera or anything else. But in reality, just as the camera is a one-way street, Andrew ends up communicating one way and never truly connecting. Just as a person’s expectations can lead to severe despair when they don’t reach the success that lies ahead, Andrew’s timid personality is something he tries to escape by using his abilities to perform with his friends, but the nauseating incident at the party blinds him to the normalcy that is right in front of him. (In fact, he may have already reached his limits: his out-of-character behavior and great abilities that don’t match his timidity have made him a force to be reckoned with, but he’s a powerful beast who still struggles to connect with others. His inability to communicate later bubbles over with effort, and his misguided rebellion howls at everyone but himself. However, it’s not Andrew’s fault that he’s crying for help; in fact, he doesn’t accept Steve as a friend. The Steve he sees is the perfect friend, but the Steve he sees is a vulnerable human being who confides his secrets. But Andrew is the first to reject Steve’s attempts to connect with him. In fact, he may not even know how to get along with people. Or maybe he’s afraid to make a connection. Despite Steve’s attempts to relate to him more closely than to his cousin Matt, Andrew, the dumb predator, shouts.

“Please leave me alone!”

Another camera besides

What’s interesting about Casey’s appearance is not so much her, but the camera she’s holding. She’s the only other distinct presence in the movie other than Andrew’s camera, which moves freely after he gains telekinesis. In fact, Casey’s presence is not that important to the movie. Why did the director include her when he could have left her out? The answer is simple: he needed another camera to make the movie look more lively. Her presence in the movie is ridiculously irrelevant, and her romance with Matt seems tacked on in a way that makes it seem like she’s just another camera. She’s just another camera, another MacGuffin. Very few people will be curious about her existence. And it’s likely not because her character is interesting, but because she’s a beautiful actress in a movie. Casey isn’t the only interesting thing about the movie, though Andrew’s telekinetic camera movements (the creepy shots of kids flying through the sky, the extreme up-and-down shots when Steve goes to the location of the mysterious den that Matt died in and left him alone with his powers) also play a role, However, the explosion scene in the convenience store where they are robbing the store and instead of bringing their own cameras, they use CCTV to show what’s going on, or the footage of them on a broadcaster’s camera watching Andrew in the explosion scene at the end, or the footage of people filming them on their cell phones around them, are somehow intentional shots that are drawn out of the movie, and most of the audience won’t find it strange. So, the bouncing cameras in the grunge explosion scene, the multiple angles, and the fact that the director was able to make a connection between each one of them, rather than just making them outrageous, shows how carefully he prepared the movie. It’s interesting to think that Casey’s presence and the cameras that surround us, such as CCTV and broadcast cameras, have created a movie.

Chronicle movie review

The question I have after watching this movie is why Chronicle needs to be labeled as a “wandering teenager” movie. Teenagers wander. But 20-somethings wander, too. 30s wander. All human beings are wandering beings, and they want to communicate. Does that mean that young, ignorant kids are dangerous because they have the ability? No, it doesn’t. Age alone does not express human immaturity. It’s not that they’re young and don’t know where they’re going, but that human nature doesn’t change with age. Timid children grow up to be timid adults, and inconsiderate and selfish children grow up to be selfish. People are social animals, and it is an unspoken promise that we grow up communicating with others, being patient and caring. The problem is that people who break this promise can be children or adults. I believe it’s a misconception to think of youth as restless, wandering beings. The world is too empty for any human being, regardless of age.
In this age of selfishness, there are not many people who can be true heroes. The heroes we think of are usually chosen, like in comics or science fiction movies. Those who aren’t chosen and have powers of their own will use them for their own good, unlike the heroes we’re used to seeing, and sometimes they don’t, and we can’t blame Andrew for that. But just as a hero who can’t control himself can’t prevent others from controlling him, Andrew’s powers beyond himself lead to his downfall. Just as a wound swells the more severe it is and bursts with pus when touched, so Andrew’s runaway behavior pops, bursts, and disappears like a bubble. To describe him in a single word would be to say that Andrew, the alienated and timid boy we remember, is being transformed into a monster by his sudden abilities, but the environment he has lived in is enough to make him a monster even without his abilities. It is not his “abilities” that make him a monster, but the people around him. We, who have contributed to his monstrosity, can only remain silent in the face of his rampage.