Reed Solomon Presents Movie Reviews: Chronicle

Today I was checking out Netflix, and up popped Chronicle -  A movie that I was interested in seeing until I saw the first 5 minutes of it and decided it's shit.  But, I completely forgot about that experience and saw it on Netflix, so -- yay! I guess?  SPOILERS.  I spoil the whole movie.  Though for something to spoil, you'd think it had to have been good in the first place.

Chronicle is about 3 teenage idiots who obtain superpowers from some sort of alien macguffin for no real reason.  They're idiots because they don't know how to use superpowers, they've never read a goddamn comicbook.  Perhaps comicbooks don't exist in their universe?  I don't know.. But anybody who has read a comicbook or even watched a comicbook movie (which this isn't) would have some idea of how to use superpowers and with great responsibility comes something something or something.

Anyways, the main character is a loser whose mom is dying of, I dunno, lung cancer or something cause she smoked.  Maybe not, she didn't have her larynx removed or anything.  Whatever.  His father is a firefighter who gets workers comp I guess and spends his money on alcohol.  He's a dick, because as we all know, firefighters are all dicks who never did anything for anybody  His father beats him and pushes him around because he's drunk I guess.

I forget all of the characters names.  Except the black kid, Steve.  Steve is the first to die at the hands of loser boy.  Well maybe not, maybe it's just cause they were both flying in the air during a lightning storm.   They seem to have telekenesis based powers so I don't know if lightning and stuff defeats telekenesis, I'm not good at paper rock lightning telekenesis scissors fire.  But it seems to kill Steve.  RIP Steve.

Loser boy can't even gets laid and throws up on the girl who is practically begging him.  He has superpowers, he gets popularity, and whatever.  I dunno.  Maybe he has Aspergers.   Seems to have the symptoms. I don't know if that was the impression they were going for but that's what I got out of it.

Anyways loser boy has a cousin who is a pretty cool guy.  After Steve dies  loserboy goes down the winding road to insane psychopath.  I suppose the writers and directors were trying to tell a story about how an abusive situation leads to blah blah blah, but it really came off as kid is a mentalcase.  He ends up turning to supervillainy, robbing a bunch of street hoodlums in his fathers firefighter uniform.  He gets like #50 bucks out of it.  You have superpowers, idiot.  Rob a freakin' bank or something if you're going to be a supervillain.  Or make money as a magician or government assasin or something.  So many job opportunities available to you, but idiot loser boy has only $50 and needs more money for his mothers medicine (It's the third world nation known as America after all) and robs a gas station, but accidentally blows it up and he's in the hospital in a coma.

He wakes up from comaville after his father tells him his mother dies and it's all his fault.  First, did he make his mother smoke those cigarettes?  No.  And the father says its his fault because instead of being home he was out looking for his son.  Whatever.

Anyways, loserboy goes on a rampage of killing and messing things up, and his cousin tries to reason with him.  Cousin had a sidestory with some girl, I don't know maybe she died, she seemed nice, aside from her ugly Volkswagen.  Anyways, cousin eventually kills loserboy and flies away.   Only one guy with superhero powers left and he goes to Tibet to fullfil the promise he, Steve, and loserboy had.  Poor Steve.  Steve didn't really care about the Tibet thing, though.

Anyways, could have used some shots of the cousin character in Tibet messing with the Buddhist priests or something.  The ending was somewhat underwhelming, least of which the downward spiral of loserboy made no sense whatsoever.

But maybe crazy psychotics aren't supposed to make sense.  Maybe superpowers shouldn't be given to unstable emotional anti-social individuals with aspergers.  I blame the aliens.

It's interesting to note that Steve gets hit by lightning while flying in the sky during a thunderstorm.  If people did have the power to fly, would they be stupid enough to fly into a thunderstorm?  What's interesting about it is the power to fly is probably the most desired superhero.  Most desired, yet most likely to kill you dead unless you have invincibility with it.

Could this movie have been better?  Yes.  Definitely.  No question.  I did sit through all the way to the end of the movie hoping something useful would happen, but alas, no.  Still, this movie is one of the movies that came out in 2012, so there you have it.