Chronicle - The Best Mockumentary In Years!

(2012) ★★★★☆

‘Chronicle’ is the most ingenious and thought-provoking mockumentary I’ve ever seen in years. With superb editing skills, sound and visual effects, it tells a gripping story of 3 teenagers gaining super power after exploring a deep hole in the ground and getting exposed to some sort of radiation generated by a seemingly alien thing. Well… it doesn’t really matter what it is. The focus of this film is on how they deal with their super power afterwards, and what it brings to them in the end. You know what? If I were them, no way I’d get down that hole in the first place!

There’re two memorable sequences in the film. One shows three of them flying up in the sky playing football excitedly. It’s like one of our dreams, isn’t it? I felt kind of jealous at first but then I heard one of them shout, ‘it’s freezing up here.’ Right, how could I forget about that? Being able to fly up high isn’t really a good thing after all. You have to consider how to keep warm every time you go up there. Also, you must pay extra attention while flying or you’d probably get hit and killed by lightning or a plane or some other danger you never know. I guess that’s an inevitable price to pay when you explore a new territory. The other one is the ending where things spin crazily out of control. You’d better go check it out for yourself to find out how and why. Of course you could sense something wrong right at the beginning. With a character like that, you know it’s meant to be a tragedy.

What if you had super power all of a sudden? Would you use it to impress your pals?; to play pranks?; to get famous and rich?; to help those in need? Would you feel comfortable with it? Or would you feel lost because you don’t know how to live with it? In the film, those three lads set rules to restrict themselves, like not to perform it in the public, not to use it on living things, etc, because they’re not sure what their power may really do to them. It makes me wonder, what’s so good about having super power then? What’s so great about standing out from the crowd? Would people look up to me like God or look down on me like a freak? Would I be worshipped or be locked away for studies? Either way, I’ll be in serious trouble. Said that with great power comes great responsibility. If you’re not strong enough to bear the pain and responsibility that come with it, forget about becoming something special. Otherwise, you could be a big problem!