When I was much younger I tossed the concept of a film about a school shooting in my head. A story that followed the young men that would commit such an atrocity and what would drive them to do such a thing. As the years progressed, it eventually became a concept for a game, and then it grew to a single story that took place from multiple angles. From the control of the more violent shooter, to the reluctant shooter, to a cop outside of the school, to a survivor trying to escape, and so on.

Days, weeks, months, years passed, and the idea dwindled away. While a part of me still feels such a game could have interesting potential, another part of me feels such a game is completely unnecessary.

All throughout high school I continued this notion that it was an “us vs. them” culture, and that I was automatically outcast and a reject due to being a nerd. That’s how it had been up until grade 8, when I moved and switched school districts. It was only well after graduation that I realized none of that really mattered in my new town, what became my home. Now, even the house I spent my childhood in grows unfamiliar. It is a haze, and I can barely recall the feelings of sadness when I cried in the shower, asking God why I was even alive if the entire world was going to hate and reject me.

I suppose that detachment from that life is why I was a bit disappointed in Chronicle. From the beginning you can tell what they’re setting up for the protagonist Andrew. An abusive father, bullies at school, even being told that he’s creepy by the cheerleaders. The young man wants to record his life, possibly as a method of trying to understand it. To be an observer into a world that he is unable to understand. People ask him why he has the camera on him all the time, that it seems creepy or weird. He stutters, unable to articulate why he is using it.

It is familiar to me, being unable to see the world as others do, and as a result being unable to explain yourself.

The film takes its natural turn, though, and young Andrew finds himself following his cousin Matt and classmate Steven down into a hole. They discover a mysterious, almost alien looking rock formation, and next thing the boys know they are slowly developing telekinetic powers.

The majority of the film follows the three of these boys figuring out their abilities, seeming to be a story about how Andrew was saved. The incident is a catalyst for the three young men, becoming tightly knit friends. It reminds of high school, both the awkward times and even the delightful ones. That step towards adulthood, where you can do all these things you’ve always wanted as a child no matter how selfish. Only this time, they have super powers.

This was the best part of the film. A story about Andrew being saved from his depressing downward spiral, being torn further and further away from the rest of humanity, only to be given this chance to bond with two others. A chance to find joy in life and friendship. To feel accepted and recognized for his strengths.

Yet the film takes that crucial change. Naturally everything has to go all wrong, and just when Andrew is at the height of his happiness he is sucked back under. All because of some embarrassment during his first time with a girl, no less. That is all it takes for Andrew to question his own friends, how they never even spoke to him before he gained his powers. From then on it is one pitfall after another until he is full blown out of control. The end of this film is is like a testing ground for a live-action remake of Akira.

That downward spiral begins to feel like a different movie. Andrew becomes much more sinister as he experiments with his powers, going so far as to rip the teeth from a bully’s mouth, only to later discuss and intellectualize it in front of the camera. He speaks about how he is a higher evolved being with a high school boy’s superficial understanding of the most selfish philosophies.

It was a movie that I continued to enjoy, but I wanted to be separate. I didn’t want Andrew to become evil, a warning. I wanted Andrew to be saved. I wanted things to turn out differently than you would expect.

See, the boy that was speaking that philosophy of evolution, that had become so far detached from humanity that he was able to hold bloody teeth in his hand, analyzing the process and how he might improve it in the future, that’s an interesting character and scenario to explore. Yet there is one trite misunderstanding here. The mastermind of Columbine was not the outcast that a lot of media portrayed him to be, and many people, especially adults, liked him.

Which is what frustrates me about Chronicle. It should have been about how super powers managed to save a boy standing on the brink, a boy close to blowing his father’s brains out before turning it on himself. Insanity of passion, so to speak. If anyone should have become the villain, it should have been one of the other characters. One of the guys that was on top of the world, but now had to prove himself.

I liked Chronicle and thought it was a good, well put-together movie. Unfortunately, I feel like they began with a much more heart-warming film and ended with a completely different one, intended to have a message that doesn’t provide any true understanding to the sort of people, the sort of kids, committing horrible crimes at such a young age.